A unit selection text-to-speech synthesis system optimized for use with screen readers

Aimilios Chalamandaris, Sotiris Karabetsos, Pirros Tsiakoulis, Spyros Raptis
2010 IEEE transactions on consumer electronics  
Currently, unit-selection text-to-speech technology is the common approach for near-natural speech synthesis systems. Such systems provide an important aid for blind or partially-sighted people, when combined with screen reading software. However, although the overall quality of the synthetic speech achieved by such systems can be quite high, this fact alone does not guarantee a high level of user satisfaction. Many issues have to be coped with in order to fulfill users' expectations when
more » ... ating such systems with screen reading tools aiming to assist blind users. This work describes the design and the implementation approaches for the efficient integration of this technology into screen reading environments. In particular, the issues of natural language processing, speed optimization, multilingual design and overall quality optimization are mainly addressed in this paper. In order to evaluate the resulting system, we carried out subjective assessment tests where expert users provided feedback about performance, quality and overall experience. 1 He has been a lecturer at graduate and post-graduate level and has participated in a number of National and European RTD projects on speech technology, computational intelligence, robotics, and multimedia educational applications. He is currently a researcher at the Voice & Sound Technology Department at the Institute for Language and Speech Processing (ILSP) leading the speech synthesis team. He also affiliates with innoetics ltd. His research interests include speech processing and applications, computational intelligence, software agents, hybrid systems and robotics.
doi:10.1109/tce.2010.5606343 fatcat:4sys7zthuzdapdtp6mupemsd5m