Hey and happy International Women's Day.

Before I go into the topic of this email, I'd like to take a moment to celebrate both men and women today. To celebrate life and all the brave souls who are fighting for theirs with hope for a better future for themselves and their families 💛💙.

I didn't have the energy nor the right state of mind to post much lately, but while catching up with some updates on Medium, I noticed a new feature - one can now listen to a story as well as read it from the platform.

On the desktop version of Medium look for the button that says "listen" on the right-hand side of the author's name before each story:

The feature was in beta for a while, but I believe they are now releasing it to everyone. If you don't have access to it yet, give it a few days so they can deploy it to all users.

The voice is a bot and you can choose between several of them as well as adjust the reading speed by clicking on the relevant buttons in the pop-up window (bottom right-hand corner of the screen).

I listened to a couple of my own stories to test it out. While the intonation and cadence are not 100% there yet, I think it's a great step forward for people who are visually impaired or who prefer to listen to a story in the background while they do something else.

What I find interesting is that with this move Medium is giving us a glimpse into what they see as the future of content creation and it's clear that audio plays a big role. Podcasts anyone?

It would be great if Medium allowed authors to record their own audio of their articles, but until then (if it happens), we'll have to work with what we've got. In my case, it's Stephanie - the only female voice with a British accent.

Let me know what you think of this new feature and if it makes Medium.com more or less attractive to you.

Until next time, stay safe.

Alisa