Of Audiobooks and a World Without Barriers
In Thailand, an estimated 204,012 visually impaired individuals face significant barriers to education and entertainment due to the lack of accessible reading materials.
While audiobooks offer a potential solution, existing platforms suffer from limited content, poor-quality recordings, and inadequate accessibility features. With this challenge in mind, a group of CMKL students and their advisor, Ajan Justin, launched the SONAR project—an AI-powered mobile application that converts physical books into audiobooks using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Text-to-Speech (TTS) technology.
Unlike traditional audiobook production, which relies on time-consuming manual narration, SONAR automates the process, allowing users to scan books and instantly listen to them. The team focused on developing a Thai-specific OCR and TTS pipeline to ensure accurate recognition and synthesis of Thai text, a complex task due to the language’s tonal nature.
One of the biggest hurdles the team encountered was TTS development. Since Thai is a tonal language, ensuring accurate pronunciation was a major challenge. "We had to modify the VITS framework to properly handle Thai character symbols," the team explained, emphasizing the need for phoneme-based synthesis rather than simple text conversion.
Another challenge was dataset preparation. The team manually verified tonal accuracy after generating scripts from various sources, such as podcasts and audiobooks, making sure that the synthesized speech sounded natural and intelligible.
Beyond the technical challenges, the team faced difficulties in securing partnerships with book publishers. Initially, they approached Thailand’s largest publishers but found them reluctant to collaborate."Most big publishers already have their own digital platforms, so they weren’t interested," they shared. Adapting their approach, they shifted focus to smaller publishers, which proved to be a successful strategy. This led to their first secured book rights from Storyyard, with ongoing discussions with Time Publishing.
Their long-term strategy is to build credibility through smaller publishers before re-engaging with larger companies.
"We believe that once we establish a successful track record, major publishers will see the value in working with us," they explained.
A critical aspect of SONAR’s success is ensuring the app is truly accessible. The team worked closely with stakeholders, including the Charity Foundation for the Blind in Thailand (CFBT), to refine the user interface for screen-reader compatibility.
However, conducting usability testing proved challenging due to technical limitations.
"Our initial UX testing tool wasn’t compatible with screen readers, so we had to build a Flutter prototype just for testing," the team shared.
Their advisor, Ajan Justin, put a big emphasis on the importance of designing with empathy.
"The golden rule is to step into the user’s experience—what does it feel like to navigate a UI without sight?" he remarked.
His insights helped shape key accessibility features, such as voice navigation and a three-button layout to simplify interaction for visually impaired users.
For now, SONAR remains a charity initiative, providing free access to visually impaired users at CFBT. However, the team is considering a future commercial expansion. "If we can maintain affordability and accessibility, there’s potential to turn this into a startup," they revealed.
Beyond the technical development, the biggest lesson from SONAR has been the power of adaptability. Their advisor summed it up best:
"The team has learned how to fully step into their roles, adapt, and specialize. That’s a skill that will stay with them long after this project."
As a writer covering this project, I love books, not just for the stories they tell, but for the worlds they open, the ideas they spark, and the way they connect us to stories bigger than ourselves. Yet, for many visually impaired individuals, that experience has always been out of reach. An accessible world, where everyone can read and learn without barriers, often feels like an impossible ideal…..a little too distant to be real.
But maybe it isn’t.
Maybe real change doesn’t come all at once, but in the quiet, determined efforts of those who refuse to accept limitations.
One app.
One audiobook.
One step at a time.
Piece by piece, this team is turning what once seemed unreachable into something truly accessible. And perhaps, in the process, they’re proving that the world we imagine isn’t so far away after all.
