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Making assistive reading tools user friendly: a new platform for Greek dyslexic students empowered by automatic speech recognition

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Abstract

This work presents our effort to incorporate a state of the art speech recognition engine into a new platform for assistive reading for improving reading ability of Greek dyslexic students. This platform was developed in the framework of the Agent-DYSL, IST project, and facilitates dyslexic children in learning to read fluently. Unlike previously presented approaches, the aim of the system is not only to enable access to the reading materials within an inclusive learning system but to promote the development of reading skills by adjusting and adapting in the light of feedback to the system. The idea is to improve speech recognition performance so that gradually increase the reading capabilities of the user, gradually diminish the assistance provided, till he is able to read as a non-dyslexic reader. The evaluation results show that both learners’ reading pace and learners’ reading accuracy were increased.

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Acknowledgments

This research work has been supported by the European IST-2005-2.5.11 e-inclusion program within the project “Agent-DYSL”, (www.Agent-DYSL.eu).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Voice and Sound Technology, Institute for Language and Speech Processing (ILSP)/R.C. “Athena”, Artemidos 6 & Epidavrou, 151 25, Maroussi, Athens, Greece

    Theologos Athanaselis, Stelios Bakamidis & Ioannis Dologlou

  2. Department of Mathematics, School of Applied Mathematical and Physical Sciences, National Technical University of Athens, Iroon Polytexneiou 9–Zografou, 15780, Athens, Greece

    Evmorfia N. Argyriou & Antonis Symvonis

Authors
  1. Theologos Athanaselis
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  2. Stelios Bakamidis
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  3. Ioannis Dologlou
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  4. Evmorfia N. Argyriou
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  5. Antonis Symvonis
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Correspondence to Theologos Athanaselis.

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Athanaselis, T., Bakamidis, S., Dologlou, I. et al. Making assistive reading tools user friendly: a new platform for Greek dyslexic students empowered by automatic speech recognition. Multimed Tools Appl 68, 681–699 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-012-1073-5

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