skip-silence VS jumpcutter

You could also try this player: https://github.com/vantezzen/skip-silence / https://vantezzen.github.io/skip-silence/player/

If the 8/9 hours if off putting to some people, there exists browser extensions like "Skip Silence" that fast forwards videos during parts where there is no sound coming through.

Youtube videos with closed captions on are a nice way to ease into it. There's chrome extensions to increase the speed over the '2x' playback option youtube gives you. I personally don't enjoy podcasts at above 1.3x to 1.5x speed but when I am reading along with subtitles, I can increase the speed easily to 2.7x+. I don't think I did any specific practice.

After a certain amount of minutes, at 1.5x speed, the cadence of lectures at high speed start to feel normal and going back to 1.0x speed feels slow, as if it was 0.7x speed. Sort of like an audio illusion.

It reminds me of the feeling you get when you have been on a highway at a high speed for hours on a road trip. For whatever reason, my brain stops understanding how fast the "slow" speed of 20mph is is. So it feels extra slow even though relative to walking it's really fast.

Recently I came across Jump Cutter https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jump-cutter/lmppdp... which is an extension to speed up silences while keeping spoken audio at normal speed. You can customize it, but it's been an interesting experience, the audio is at an effective 1.9x speed while only being 1.4x during the spoken section.

Screen readers have a place, but the value in screen readers for the non-visually impaired is limited to the text-to-speech function.

I also know that some visually impaired people get used to certain voices to the point where they can make at words at a higher speed using a specific voice compared to others. Getting to 3x is much much easier than you imagine, it will take less than an hour if you increase the speed by 0.2x every 15ish minutes. You get used to it really quickly. The human brain is pretty fantastic in that regard.

I personally found that past 2.7x speed, even if I can understand the words, I can't comprehend new ideas and words fast enough for it to make sense and I end up having to pause. There definitely is a a point of diminishing returns, and for me it's around 2.6x, 2.7x. It depends on the lecturer cadence though.

If you want simple emulation of navigating using a screen reader, navigating having disabled your mouse is a good starting point. NVDA is the gold standard for screen readers.