Enabling Text-To-Speech Functionality for Websites and Applications Using a Content-Derived Model

Abstract

Today’s society is largely dependent on the Internet websites that provide it with access to various information. While most users take accessing information in this way as granted, some user groups have significant issues while trying to access websites by traditional means. In this context, we focus on persons with severe visual impairment that are unable to use websites that are not text-to-speech enabled. The paper analyses existing solutions and proposes a model for enabling text-to-speech functionality based on deriving tree-like structure from website or web application content. The proposed model is evaluated on two case-studies; institutional website and interactive educational web application.

Keywords

• text-to-speech
• website content analysis
• website structure
• web content presentation
• web accessibility
• visual impairments