- From: <jim@arkenstone.org>
- Date: Tue, 13 May 97 06:00:28
- To: Al Gilman <asgilman@access.digex.net>
- CC: w3c-wai-wg@w3.org (WAI Working Group), dave@arkenstone.org
>Jim, is there anything up on the web that would pass for a situation >survey? Something about what is in practice in the field, and >possible opportunities to improve things by defining standards? I'm not sure, because there are several directions to explore. 1. What is the current state of the art in text-to-speech technology? This is not as nice as people would like, because the humanlike quality falls short of what is desired. Our speech synthesizer interface library ("SSIL"), the leading standard used in applications developed for the blind, is a good example of the state of the art five years ago. Unfortunately, the state of the art in TTS hasn't changed much except for the need to live in 32 bit environments! 2. What should we plan for in the future? My impression from reading the briefing package is that we're discussing aiming quite high, trying to mark up material with very rich information. The question also exists of where the primary responsibility for natural speech output lies: in the document creator or the output device. Are we aiming for the least common denominator browser client in content or a richer one? The answer is usually yes, both. As someone who is mainly interested in developing talking client applications, I'd like to be able to deliver all of what is possible. However, that's a high bar! 3. What should a talking browser do in handling different kinds of objects? Some applications call out different objects with a "LINK" statement. I agree with you that a slight change in the TTS would be desirable for some users. I've done an application for reading scanned material aloud that has five different voices (reading, menu, bold, italic and underline), and think that this would be a valuable way to convey information. I think the underlying information should be there and each user make the choice of how it is conveyed. I'm just feeling my way in this group, trying to figure out where we're going technically. Jim Fruchterman jim@arkenstone.org President Arkenstone, Inc. 555 Oakmead Parkway 1-800-444-4443 Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USA 1-408-245-5900 "Information Access for Everyone!" Fax: 1-408-328-8484 http://www.arkenstone.org
Received on Tuesday, 13 May 1997 09:02:35 UTC