Young Omanis create audiobooks for disabled residents

Muscat: An audio storybooks library for the blind is being developed by Omani students.

Sawti Hyat is the first platform for the recording of audio books in the Sultanate of Oman. It consists of a voluntary youth team at Sultan Qaboos University who transforms reading books into audiobooks and recording them with the voices of the team members.

Since the establishment of the team to date, 19 CDs of audiobooks have been released, including books, poems, and story collections.

"The group seeks to promote the knowledge by audio to benefit the visually impaired and blind youth and adult, as well as the reading community in general, so that everyone can receive knowledge at any place and time."Jawaher Al Hosni member of Sawti Hyat.

The team includes more than 60 members whose skills and tasks vary from voice commentary, language audit, public relations, design and photography. Jawaher added: "The voice commentator in the team must be characterized by: clarity of speech, excellent sound quality, ability to cast characters and good vocal performance."

"We do not start to record the book until we receive the approval from the publisher or writer," she explained. "The project of recording audiobooks passes through a number of stages such as: text selection, language checking and selection of appropriate commentator for the text, recording in presence of supervisors, and later, the production department receives the record for checking and publication,"

Sawti Hyat team was launched in 2013 with the aim of serving the blind and the non-reading, in order to enhance the reading culture.

"At the beginning The project was initiated by a number of blind people at Sultan Qaboos University and the first audio book we record was "You as You Want" by Talal Al Rawahi, which was distributed to more than 500 blind people in the Gulf States," Jawaher said. "The books' selection are based on the quality of the content, the popularity among people and whether it has won prizes. The team also takes suggestions through social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram for books that the audience wants to hear."

The team won a number of prizes, including the 2016 Omani Association of Writers and Literature Award, and won first place in the Ministry of Sports Affairs Award for Youth Initiatives.

Sawti Hyat team plan to recording 1000 books, and with English recordings planned as well.