- From: Neil Soiffer <NeilS@DesSci.com>
- Date: Wed, 2 Jun 2004 23:08:58 -0700
- To: <David.Pawson@rnib.org.uk>, <www-math@w3.org>
[snip] > We are working with other vendors to incorporate > synchronized speech/highlighting into high-end magnifiers > that use speech and learning disability tools. > > The daisy program has a not dissimilar approach; for a pc based reading > tool, the text / speech is synchronised by SMIL. It also plays on > a standalone player, without the visual aspect. > I'm looking for a tool such as yours to generate the audio prior > to building the books on CD for customer delivery. Although the right menu entry "Speak Expression" allows MathPlayer to be self-voicing, the interface we have for screen readers is simply to return the string of text to be spoken. At the moment, MathPlayer is tied to the IE environment, but if there was sufficient demand, a non-IE specific interface/dll could be delivered. > > This work was funded in part by a grant from the NSF, and > we fully understand that the speech output can and should > be improved from the what is part of MathPlayer 2.0. We > also understand that navigation of large expressions and > generation of various braille math codes such as Nemeth > code are important and we are working on these aspects of > the project. > > Great. The key part there is the separation of the text generation > from the synthesis, to allow higher quality voices to be used? They are separate, although MathPlayer can use prosidy to improve the speech if you use a SAPI 5 voice. We are also working on support for SAPI 4 voices. > Also the intermediate form (whatever that might be) to [name your > braille math code] would be ideal as an XSLT transform, to enable > other countries to use their own math braille code, since few > real standards exist. Is that the architecture you are working on? MathML is a great intermediate form. You might be interested in http://karshmer.lklnd.usf.edu/~igroupuma/ and the paper http://karshmer.lklnd.usf.edu/~igroupuma/Docs/iGroupUMA.pdf where they are using MathML as the intermediate language for various (two-way) math braille code translations. Neil Soiffer Senior Scientist phone: 562-433-0685 Design Science, Inc. http://www.dessci.com "How Science Communicates" MathType, WebEQ, MathPlayer, Equation Editor, TeXaide
Received on Thursday, 3 June 2004 02:09:28 UTC