Power On! Audiobook
PAC produced its first audiobook: an accessible adaptation of Power On! by UCLA researchers Jean J. Ryoo and Jane Margolis, uniting authentic casting, integrated visual description, and carefully balanced sound design to bring the graphic novel’s technology-justice story to listeners.
Project Description
PAC produced the audiobook adaptation of Power On!, a graphic novel by Jean J. Ryoo and Jane Margolis, by combining authentically cast performances, visual description, and carefully balanced sound design to bring a story about technology justice to listeners in a fully accessible form.
Graphic novels are among the most visually driven forms of storytelling. Panels, gutters, character design, and artistic style all carry meaning, and that meaning is traditionally available only to those who can see it. For the audiobook version of a book about who gets excluded from technology, PAC was driven to ensure the audiobook was inclusive of those audiences.
Power On! was published in 2022 by the MIT Press and follows four high school friends from diverse backgrounds as they confront the harm technology has done in their own community. They awaken to how technology can perpetuate racism and inequality, recognize that the companies building it rarely reflect the voices of women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and immigrant communities, and seek out computing experiences that are both personally and politically empowering. Informed by decades of educational research, the book makes the case that young people need to be critical creators of technology, not merely users shaped and controlled by it.
Its authors know this territory deeply. Jane Margolis, senior researcher at the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies and an Obama White House Champion of Change, is the lead author of the award-winning books Unlocking the Clubhouse and Stuck in the Shallow End, foundational examinations of gender and racial inequity in computer science education. Jean J. Ryoo, an educational researcher at UCLA, focuses on justice and equity in STEM and computer science education, centering the perspectives of students, educators, and parents through research-practice partnerships.
In July of 2022, Jean and Jane presented their graphic novel Power On! at the Computer Science Teachers Association conference and spoke about the inequalities that existed in computing education. In the audience was Gina Fugate, a computer science technology teacher at the Maryland School for the Blind and friend of PAC, who asked the authors about their plans to make an accessible version of the novel. Gina recommended that Jean and Jane reach out to PAC, a team of computer scientists and true audiobook fans. For PAC, the project was a natural fit: a chance to apply our inclusive design methodology to a medium we love, in service of a story whose themes of inclusion in technology sit at the heart of our mission. It became PAC’s first audiobook production, led by executive producer Sam Shaw from casting through post-production.
Casting for Authentic Representation
Authentic representation was of the utmost importance to the authors, and PAC conducted an extensive casting process to find voice actors whose lived experiences aligned with the characters they would portray. On a project designed to increase access for marginalized groups, representational equity was not a preference. It was a requirement.
Giordan Diaz, a first-generation Cuban American actor and voiceover artist based in Brooklyn, plays Antonio, a Mexican American teen and the child of recent immigrants, brooding and quiet, with deep thoughts and a dry, sarcastic wit. The casting deliberately sought not just an accent, but the specific way of speaking English unique to Mexican Americans born and raised in Los Angeles.
Shaun Grace, a freelance voice actor and stage performer based in Philadelphia, is best known for the indie video game MerFight and the audiobook series Sheriff Labrador. Shaun plays Jon, a plucky, openhearted gay teen whose sunny optimism refuses to be dimmed by anyone’s negativity.
Author Jean J. Ryoo voices Christine, a mixed-race (Korean and Salvadoran) student who is thoughtful, funny, and quick to stand up for the people and values she loves, bringing an author’s intimacy to a character she helped create.
Takeria Blunt, a researcher working at the intersection of human-centered design, data science, and computing education, voices Taylor, a young Black woman finding her place in computing, casting that mirrors the very pathways into technology the book advocates for.
Twenty volunteer performers rounded out the supporting cast. To create a consistent sound across dozens of recording environments, PAC shipped each volunteer the same Snowball microphone and provided a crash course in microphone technique, placement, and recording setup.
Weaving in Visual Description
The success of an audiobook graphic novel relies heavily on its visual description. PAC worked with our long-time collaborator and describer extraordinaire JJ Hunt to author descriptions honoring the book’s Japanese manga and South Korean manhwa influences, capturing not just what happens in each scene but how characters move through their environments and the artistic decisions that let listeners draw inferences of their own.
The craft was in restraint. Rather than delivering every action in triplicate through dialogue, description, and sound effects, the descriptions were delicately woven into the auditory landscape to support the dialogue and keep pace with the story. JJ, PAC, and the authors refined the descriptions through several rounds of review.
The audiobook opens with a Visual Description Introduction covering the art style, layout, text treatments, notes, cover art, and long-form character descriptions, giving listeners the same orientation to the book’s visual world that sighted readers absorb from the page. The description called for a strong, authoritative voice, and PAC found it in Tangi Greene, an Atlanta-based professional voice actor whose warm, engaging delivery has served brands including the Weather Channel, CNN, AT\&T, and the United Way.
Every element of the physical book was rendered in an audio form, from the cover, author’s statement, and dedication through the acknowledgments and back cover.
The book’s citations posed a familiar dilemma: reading long references and URLs aloud interrupts the story, while transcribing a spoken URL is nearly impossible and deeply frustrating. Instead, notes are indicated with a sound effect and a number, and the Visual Description Introduction directs listeners to the Power On! website, where full citations and links live in an accessible format.
Production and Sound Design
The audiobook was recorded across seven live, remotely directed sessions over a year and a half, with actors and producers spanning time zones from Los Angeles to Spain. Live direction was provided on Zoom calls while SonoBus simultaneously captured remote recordings. In each session, every recording setup was individually quality-assured, which without fail would shake the technical gremlins loose. Latency and technical hurdles were constant companions, but the remote workflow held!
PAC partnered with Alex Rees of Visible Music on post-production and sound design. Sound effects libraries were licensed and curated to match the book’s subtle tone, adding texture to each scene without ever tipping into the cartoonish or distracting from the drama. PAC scrupulously reviewed renders of every chapter, working with Alex to find the balance of effects and ambiance that matched the tone of the graphic novel, a process that spanned two years of post-production, pickups, and even a full reconstruction of the project after access to the original sound effects was lost.
The team persevered, and PAC is thrilled to have launched its first audiobook.
Where to Listen
Power On! is available now on Audible, or for free on Apple Books, Google Play, TuneIn, Kobo, Libro.fm, Chirp Books, and Storytel. Learn more about the book at the Power On! website.