We do not read the lecture to you

It is tempting to offer “hear the whole lesson” while the text is on the screen and the picture is beside it. Three channels, same sentences. That is not access. That is a jam. The mind does not get a third copy of a sentence as a gift. It gets a fight over which stream to follow.

If there is a picture, the spoken line should be the line that belongs with the picture — not the paragraph read aloud. If you want only sound, that is a different pass: audio without the text competing. We will not narrate the page they can already see.

The redundancy that feels like care

Parents ask for a read-aloud because some children need sound, because car rides exist, because a tired evening is easier if a voice does the work. Those are real needs. They are not met by stacking the same words in three places. Care that stacks is how you overload a child who was already working to look.

There is a name for this in the multimedia research: the redundancy principle. Spoken words plus the same written words plus a plate is too much. The generous-looking “play the whole sitting” button is, often, the least generous thing on the page.

Children who need sound deserve a clean pass, not a second copy of the same sentences laid over the first. A clean pass is audio-only, or a spoken line with the still and without the paragraph. Those are different products. We would rather ship the right one later than ship the jammed one now as a feature.

What a parent’s voice is

Read with them if you want. That is a parent’s voice, which is a different thing, and a better one. A parent can stop. A parent can point at the still. A parent can wait. A recording of the paragraph cannot wait, and it cannot see that the child is still marking the wrong object.

Tutors already know this. The hour is not a podcast. The hour is a still, a question, a near miss, a sentence. If you press play on the whole sitting to fill the hour, you have spent the hour on encoding that fights itself.

If the child is in a car, use the audio pass when we have one, or use the three due questions from paper, which do not need a screen. Do not put the paragraph in their ears while the still is on a phone they cannot mark. That is three jobs, none finished.

What we will not add as a flourish

We will not add a cheerful robot that reads the body text. We will not add background music under a definition. We will not call it “immersive.” Immersion is a word from products that want to hold attention. We want to release attention onto a pencil.

If accessibility requires captions, the captions are for the spoken line, not a duplicate of the essay. If accessibility requires a transcript, the transcript is a document, not a voice laid over the document.

We do not read the lecture to you because the lecture is not the sitting, and because the sitting is already a set of channels that have to stay out of each other’s way. Look. Mark. Read. Or listen, on a pass built for listening. Not all three at once with the same sentences. That is not how you hold an idea. That is how you hold a jam.

Cars, dishes, tired rooms

The car is the hard case people mention first. A voice in a car can be a clean audio pass: no still to mark, no paragraph to fight. Three due questions, spoken, with time to answer into the air, is a return. A full sitting narrated over traffic is a jam plus a crash risk of attention.

Dishes are a parent’s audio pass. That is fine for a podcast. It is not fine for a still that needed a finger. If you are in the dishes, you are not in the sitting. Do the sitting at the table. Do the return on paper while the water boils, if the questions are small. Do not press play on the paragraph to feel like you are still teaching.

Tired rooms want a voice to take over. The generous thing is a shorter sitting, not a second copy of the words. Cut the evening. Keep the bar. A jammed sitting that “got done” is how you get recognition without ownership.

When we ship audio, it will be labeled as a pass: with still, or without text, not “the whole lesson” as a pile. Captions will caption the spoken line. Transcripts will be documents. Robots will not perform warmth over a definition.

Your voice is still the best sound in the house. Use it to wait, to point, to ask why not B. Do not use it to compete with a recording of the same sentences. We will not add a recording that forces that competition.

We do not read the lecture to you. We may, later, offer a pass that is only sound. Until then, look, mark, read — or ask the three questions out loud from paper. Not all at once.

If they cannot read the body yet

Then you read the body, after they mark. You are not a recording. You can wait on the mark. You can point. You can stop. That is access. A robot reading the body while they still have not marked is not access. It is a skip of the looking.

If they need sound because print is not available to them as print, the clean pass is the goal: still plus spoken line, or questions spoken with time to answer. We would rather delay that pass than ship a pile of the same sentences. Delay is honest. A pile is a feature that hurts the child we meant to help.

Siblings may read to younger ones after the mark. That is a parent’s voice with extra people. It is still not a podcast of the sitting. If the sibling starts performing the paragraph, stop them. Performing is the jam with a cast.

Car rides: three due questions, out loud, time to think, no still required if the questions were written for air. If the questions required a plate, they are not car questions. Save them. Do not narrate the plate on a highway.

We will not add “hear the whole sitting” as a kindness. Kindness is a clean channel. This letter is the refusal, written down, so that when someone asks for the button we have a page to point at instead of a mood.

Do not read the lecture to them while they look and while they read. Pick a channel. Looking first. Then words, on a page or in a mouth that can wait. Not both copies at once. That is the whole audio policy until a real pass exists.