Skimming and scanning are two strategies generally used for speed reading. Skimming allows a reader to get a first glance of a document; scanning is the process of searching for a specific piece of information in a document. While both techniques are available in visual reading mode, it is rather difficult to use them in non visual environments. In this paper, we introduce the concept of tag thunder, which provides speed reading non-visual techniques similar to skimming and scanning. A tag thunder is the oral transposition of the tag cloud concept. Tag cloud key terms are presented using typographic effects which reflect their relevance and number of occurrences. Within a tag thunder, the relevance of a given key term is translated into specific speech effects and its position on the page is reflected in the position of the corresponding sound on a 2D stereo space. All key terms of a tag thunder are output according to a concurrent speech strategy, which exploits the cocktail party effect. In this paper, we present our implementation of the tag thunder concept. The results of the evaluation campaign show that tag thunders present a viable non-visual alternative to visual speed reading strategies.
Cite as: Lecarpentier, J.-M., Manishina, E., Ferrari, F.M.S., Giguet, E., Dias, G., Busson, M. (2016) Tag Thunder: Web Page Skimming in Non Visual Environment Using Concurrent Speech. Proc. 7th Workshop on Speech and Language Processing for Assistive Technologies (SLPAT 2016), 1-8, doi: 10.21437/SLPAT.2016-1
@inproceedings{lecarpentier16_slpat,
author={Jean-Marc Lecarpentier and Elena Manishina and Fabrice Maurel Stéphane Ferrari and Emmanuel Giguet and Gael Dias and Maxence Busson},
title={{Tag Thunder: Web Page Skimming in Non Visual Environment Using Concurrent Speech}},
year=2016,
booktitle={Proc. 7th Workshop on Speech and Language Processing for Assistive Technologies (SLPAT 2016)},
pages={1--8},
doi={10.21437/SLPAT.2016-1}
}