[x3al]

There are way too much homophones and you don't always have the luxury of the context. Learning a symbol for each root (not word!) is not that bad, English spelling is almost as bad, actually.

Spoken language is quite limited compared to written Japanese.

[anatoly]

Do Japanese audiobooks exist?

Assuming yes, do their users have significant problems understanding the written text when pronounced in an audiobook? Are there well-known conventions or shortcuts or explanations that audiobook readers insert into their speech to signal the correct meaning of the word?

Do Japanese audiobooks provide evidence for or against the idea that doing away with kanji in writing would not harm understanding significantly?

[x3al]

Fiction audiobooks do exists (although not nearly as common as in English-speaking countries), but audiobooks can't possibly work with non-fiction and especially technical texts unless you are going to use English words for literally every single term. I mean, Japanese has only about 100 moraes and way too much words are just 2-3 moraes long.