1. Oku 4.0 A Tool for Visually Handicapped People Designed and Implemented at Bilkent University Supported by Microsoft Research Presented by H. Altay Güvenir

2. May 6, 2005 Microsoft Academic Days2 Aim design and implement a tool for visually handicapped people speaking Turkish Read, Edit and Print a document, Browse in the internet, Send and Receive email messages. Not a screen reader!

3. May 6, 2005 Microsoft Academic Days3 Components Applications Editor Internet Browser Email Client TTS (Text To Speech) Engine for Turkish Developed separately, so that it can be used in different applications

4. May 6, 2005 Microsoft Academic Days4 History Oku1, Oku 2 Applications: Text Editor TTS: Syllable based (1350 syllables) Oku3 Applications: Editor, Internet Browser, Email Client TTS: MBrolla (3rd party) Oku4 Applications: Editor, Internet Browser, Email Client TTS: Syllable based (1820 syllables)

5. May 6, 2005 Microsoft Academic Days5 Oku3 vs Oku4 Both provide calendar, clock, calculator, HTML browser, word processor and mail clients for pop3 and smtp servers. Oku3Oku4 SDI (single document interface)MDI (multiple document interface) MBROLA sharewareNew Turkish TTS engine Simple HTML parser based browser Internet Explorer based browser is integrated PDF and DOC files can be converted to text and read Supports speech tags (compliant with Festival TTS)

6. May 6, 2005 Microsoft Academic Days6 Web browser Oku 4.0 has the following options in reading a web page: Read it all Read only the tables Read only the table cells Read only the links Read form entries Read HTML tags

7. May 6, 2005 Microsoft Academic Days7 TTS for Turkish Syllable based synthesis Words are syllabified, Sounds of syllables are produced Syllabification: A Finite State Machine w/ 21 states, Breaks a word into syllables, at most 6 letters. E.g., “Sfenks” is single syllable of 6 letters. If a word cannot be syllabified, it is spelled out (letters are pronounced). E.g., TCMB, YTL.

8. May 6, 2005 Microsoft Academic Days8 Syllables in Turkish All letters: 29 Two letter syllables: 8 x 21 = 168 Three letter syllables: 8 x 21 2 = 3,528 Four letter syllables: 8 x 21 3 = 74,088 Five letter syllables: 8 x 21 4 = 1,555,848 Six letter syllables: 8 x 21 5 = 32,672,808 Total: 34,306,440 Too high…

9. May 6, 2005 Microsoft Academic Days9 Syllables in Turkish Fortunately, we don’t have that many syllables in Turkish. We have recoded pronunciation of 3537 words. A person trained in diction An isolated studio in Radio Bilkent 1819 syllables are extracted from these words.

10. May 6, 2005 Microsoft Academic Days10 Generating sounds These 1819 syllables do dot cover all Turkish. If the sound for a syllable is not recorded, it is synthesized E.g. “cenk” is not recorded. It is synthesized from “cen” and “k”

11. May 6, 2005 Microsoft Academic Days11 Exceptions and Abbreviations Some foreign words need to be pronounced differently. E.g, Microsoft, George, show Should be pronounced as Mikrosoft, corc, şow. Some abbreviations should be spelled out E.g, DİE -> de-i-e, ABD -> a-be-de These are stored in text files, can be extended by the users.

12. May 6, 2005 Microsoft Academic Days12 Team Under guidance of a PhD student (Engin Demir) Three senior level students, as their Senior Project. Took about 20 months.

13. May 6, 2005 Microsoft Academic Days13 Availability Free Available at www.cs.bilkent.edu.tr/oku For those w/o internet access We mail a copy on a CDROM

14. May 6, 2005 Microsoft Academic Days14 Demo by Engin Demir