Serena vs. Venus

How a Photograph Spotlighted the Fight for Equality

By: Danielle Smith-Llera

Narrated by: anonymous

The final match of the 2001 US Open featuring tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams was groundbreaking. It was first time siblings had squared off in the final match for more than 100 years. And it was the first time both players were Black. The photo of the smiling Williams sisters holding their trophies after the tennis match appeared in newspapers around the globe. It captured two athletes who fought, and would continue to fight, for a place for women and African-Americans in tennis and the world beyond.

©2018 Danielle Smith-Llera (P)2017 Capstone Publishers, Inc.

VG Story, but Digitally Read

I appreciated the excellent piece written by Danielle Smith-Llera. I did not enjoy it as an audio production, though, because it’s not read or performed by a speaker but generated by an app. The “reading” repeatedly stops to output the caption to a photo originally embedded within the story (for instance), only to return to the rest several seconds later. Straightforwardly, an untenable way to generate content for Audible or any other such entity.