1 / 12

Development of Minority Language Screen Readers

ITU Workshop on Accessibility/Atelier UIT sur l’accessibilité Bamako, Mali 13 – 15 October 2009. Development of Minority Language Screen Readers. Mamoru Iwabuchi Kenryu Nakamura Paul Blenkhorn RCAST, University of Tokyo, Japan. Main Theme.

binh
Download Presentation

Development of Minority Language Screen Readers

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. ITU Workshop on Accessibility/Atelier UIT sur l’accessibilitéBamako, Mali 13 – 15 October 2009 Development ofMinority LanguageScreen Readers Mamoru Iwabuchi Kenryu Nakamura Paul Blenkhorn RCAST, University of Tokyo, Japan

  2. Main Theme • Promoting the use of assistive technology (AT) including in countries where minority languages are used

  3. Present situation of AT • Many countries, particularly developing countries, have not yet reached widespread use of AT • Financial difficulty • Language barrier (OS, text-to-speech) • Low support for people with disabilities • Small number of users • Limited range of products High cost → Challenging situation for industries

  4. Our projects Use of existing and generally available mainstream technology as a form of AT • Development of AT, e.g., screen readers, for minority languages • Teaching people about AT • Promotion of the use of accessibility features of PC • Use of mobile phones for PWD

  5. Development of screen readers for minority languages • Development cost in general: from US$100,000, or over US$1 million Screen reader is particularly Important for developing countries 4.0 2.7 0.3 0.2 Ratio of people with visual impairment in the UK, Japan, Africa, and Nepal(%)

  6. Basic structure of screen readers

  7. Front-end of screen readers • Sends on-screen text to the text-to-speech engine • Includes phonetic adjustment Rules, e.g., “re” → “er” • Requires additional feature according to each language • Can handle Unicode in recent years → Applicable to many languages in the world • Can be free for basic functions

  8. Text-to-speech engine It is desirable to provide TTS engines as a basic function of OS. • This is true for English environment. • It promotes the use of speech/reading software for PWD. But TTS engines do not exist for minority languages yet. Existing TTS engines also has a barrier for end users. The engines are bundled in other application packages. • License problem • High cost • Non-standard interface (non-SAPI)

  9. Development of screen readers for minority languages • Collaborative research with UK • Hindi text-to-speech • Thunder(free screen reader for Windows) • Phonetic adjustment using regular expressions • Collaboration with a graduate Nepali student who is blind • Infrastructure procurement • PC reuse(consult with the univ. and Nepali embassy) → A model case of developing AT for minority languages

  10. Demonstration of Nepali screen reader

  11. Toward promising practices • Development of assistive technology using existing technology • Teaching people about AT • Collaboration with national development professionals, policy makers, and people in business sectors → What is a good scheme to reach a widespread use of AT

  12. Contact address: mamoru@bfp.rcast.u-tokyo.ac.jp

More Related