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Gary: combining speech synthesis and eye tracking to support struggling readers

Published: 30 November 2015 Publication History

Abstract

Children with reading difficulties face several obstacles in learning to fluently read written material. Multimedia applications integrating text-to-speech (TTS) synthesisers are valuable tools for supporting reading activities. The paper presents GARY, an application that combines TTS synthesis with eye tracking. GARY is meant to be used on a tablet device coupled with an eye tracker. Making use of the information from reader's eye movement, the system allows users to adapt the speed rate of the synthesised voice to their pace of reading. The paper describes the system, its functioning and future steps in designing a tool for supporting readers' ability in making the connection between the sounds heard and the letters read.

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References

[1]
Ralf Biedert, Georg Buscher, and Andreas Dengel. 2009. The eyeBook -- Using Eye Tracking to Enhance the Reading Experience. Informatik-Spektrum 33, 3: 272--281.
[2]
Andrew T. Duchowski. 2002. A breadth-first survey of eye-tracking applications. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers 34, 4: 455--470.
[3]
Katharina Galuschka, Elena Ise, Kathrin Krick, and Gerd Schulte-Körne. 2014. Effectiveness of Treatment Approaches for Children and Adolescents with Reading Disabilities: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials. PLoS ONE 9, 2: e89900.
[4]
Michelann Parr. 2008. More than words: Text-to-speech technology as a matter of self-efficacy, self-advocacy, and choice. Ph.D Dissertation. McGill University.
[5]
Robin L. Peterson and Bruce F. Pennington. Developmental dyslexia. The Lancet 379, 9830: 1997--2007.
[6]
Matthew H. Schneps, Jenny M. Thomson, Chen Chen, Gerhard Sonnert, and Marc Pomplun. 2013. E-Readers Are More Effective than Paper for Some with Dyslexia. PLoS ONE 8, 9: e75634. http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0075634
[7]
Matthew H. Schneps, Jenny M. Thomson, Gerhard Sonnert, Marc Pomplun, Chen Chen, and Amanda Heffner-Wong. 2013. Shorter Lines Facilitate Reading in Those Who Struggle. PLoS ONE 8, 8: e71161.
[8]
Sally E. Shaywitz, Michael D. Escobar, Bennett A. Shaywitz, Jack M. Fletcher, and Robert Makuch. 1992. Evidence That Dyslexia May Represent the Lower Tail of a Normal Distribution of Reading Ability. New England Journal of Medicine 326, 3: 145--150.
[9]
Sally E. Shaywitz, Robin Morris, and Bennett A Shaywitz. 2008. The education of dyslexic children from childhood to young adulthood. Annual review of psychology 59: 451--475.
[10]
Marco Zorzi, Chiara Barbiero, Andrea Facoetti, et al. 2012. Extra-large letter spacing improves reading in dyslexia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109, 28: 11455--11459.

Cited By

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  • (2024)A Functional Usability Analysis of Appearance-Based Gaze Tracking for AccessibilityProceedings of the 2024 Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications10.1145/3649902.3656363(1-7)Online publication date: 4-Jun-2024
  • (2021)A Literature Review of Physiological-Based Mobile Educational SystemsIEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies10.1109/TLT.2021.309831514:3(272-291)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2021
  • (2020)Towards a gaze-contingent reading assistance for children with difficulties in readingProceedings of the 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3373625.3418014(1-4)Online publication date: 26-Oct-2020

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Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences
MUM '15: Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia
November 2015
442 pages
ISBN:9781450336055
DOI:10.1145/2836041
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

Sponsors

  • FH OOE: University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria
  • Johannes Kepler Univ Linz: Johannes Kepler Universität Linz

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 30 November 2015

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Author Tags

  1. accessibility
  2. eye tracking
  3. reading difficulties
  4. speech synthesis
  5. technology-assisted reading

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  • Demonstration

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MUM '15
Sponsor:
  • FH OOE
  • Johannes Kepler Univ Linz

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MUM '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 33 of 89 submissions, 37%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 190 of 465 submissions, 41%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2024)A Functional Usability Analysis of Appearance-Based Gaze Tracking for AccessibilityProceedings of the 2024 Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications10.1145/3649902.3656363(1-7)Online publication date: 4-Jun-2024
  • (2021)A Literature Review of Physiological-Based Mobile Educational SystemsIEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies10.1109/TLT.2021.309831514:3(272-291)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2021
  • (2020)Towards a gaze-contingent reading assistance for children with difficulties in readingProceedings of the 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3373625.3418014(1-4)Online publication date: 26-Oct-2020

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