An Open Source Web Reader for Under-Resourced Languages

Judy Y. Fong; Porsteinn Daði Gunnarsson; Sunneva Porsteinsdóttir; Gunnar Thor Örnólfsson; Jon Gudnason

An Open Source Web Reader for Under-Resourced Languages

Judy Y. Fong, Porsteinn Daði Gunnarsson, Sunneva Porsteinsdóttir, Gunnar Thor Örnólfsson, Jon Gudnason

Department of Engineering

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › peer-review

Abstract

We have developed an open source web reader in Iceland for under-resourced languages. The web reader was developed due to the need for a free and good quality web reader for languages which fall outside the scope of commercially available web readers. It relies on a text-to-speech (TTS) pipeline accessed via a cloud service. The web reader was developed using the Icelandic TTS voices Alfur and Dilja, but could be connected to any language which has a TTS pipeline. The design of our web reader focuses on functionality, adaptability and user friendliness. Therefore, the web reader's feature set heavily overlaps with the minimal features necessary to provide a good web reading experience while still being extensible enough to be adapted to work for other languages, high-resourced and under-resourced. The web reader works well on all the major web browsers and has a Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 Level AA: Acceptable compliance, meaning that it works well for the largest user groups, people in under-resourced languages with visual impairments and difficulty reading. The code for our web reader is available and published with an Apache 2.0 license at https://github.com/cadia-lvl/WebRICE, which includes a simple demo of the project.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	1st Annual Meeting of the ELRA/ISCA Special Interest Group on Under-Resourced Languages, SIGUL 2022 - held in conjunction with the International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, LREC 2022 - Proceedings
Editors	Maite Melero, Sakriani Sakti, Claudia Soria
Publisher	European Language Resources Association (ELRA)
Pages	10-15
Number of pages	6
ISBN (Electronic)	9791095546917
Publication status	Published - Jun 2022
Event	1st Annual Meeting of the ELRA/ISCA Special Interest Group on Under-Resourced Languages, SIGUL 2022 - Marseille, France Duration: 20 Jun 2022 → 25 Jun 2022

Publication series

Name	1st Annual Meeting of the ELRA/ISCA Special Interest Group on Under-Resourced Languages, SIGUL 2022 - held in conjunction with the International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, LREC 2022 - Proceedings

Conference

Conference	1st Annual Meeting of the ELRA/ISCA Special Interest Group on Under-Resourced Languages, SIGUL 2022
Country/Territory	France
City	Marseille
Period	20/06/22 → 25/06/22

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The authors thank Luke O'brien, Tiro ehf22, Félag lesblindra á Íslandi (The Iceland Dyslexia Association)23, and Blindrafélagið (Icelandic Association of the Visually Impaired)24. This project was funded by the Language Technology programme for Icelandic 2019-2023. The programme, which is managed and coordinated by Almannarómur25, is funded by the Icelandic Ministry of Education, Science and Culture.

Funding Information:
The authors thank Luke O’brien, Tiro ehf22, Félag les-blindra á Íslandi (The Iceland Dyslexia Association)23, and Blindrafélagið (Icelandic Association of the Visually Impaired)24. This project was funded by the Language Technology programme for Icelandic 2019-2023. The programme, which is managed and coordinated by Almannarómur25, is funded by the Icelandic Ministry of Education, Science and Culture.

Publisher Copyright:
© European Language Resources Association (ELRA), licensed under CC-BY-NC-4.0.

Other keywords

accessibility
human-computer interaction
text-to-speech
web reader

Cite this

Fong, J. Y., Gunnarsson, P. D., Porsteinsdóttir, S., Örnólfsson, G. T., & Gudnason, J. (2022). An Open Source Web Reader for Under-Resourced Languages. In M. Melero, S. Sakti, & C. Soria (Eds.), 1st Annual Meeting of the ELRA/ISCA Special Interest Group on Under-Resourced Languages, SIGUL 2022 - held in conjunction with the International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, LREC 2022 - Proceedings (pp. 10-15). (1st Annual Meeting of the ELRA/ISCA Special Interest Group on Under-Resourced Languages, SIGUL 2022 - held in conjunction with the International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, LREC 2022 - Proceedings). European Language Resources Association (ELRA).

Fong, Judy Y. ; Gunnarsson, Porsteinn Daði ; Porsteinsdóttir, Sunneva et al. / An Open Source Web Reader for Under-Resourced Languages. 1st Annual Meeting of the ELRA/ISCA Special Interest Group on Under-Resourced Languages, SIGUL 2022 - held in conjunction with the International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, LREC 2022 - Proceedings. editor / Maite Melero ; Sakriani Sakti ; Claudia Soria. European Language Resources Association (ELRA), 2022. pp. 10-15 (1st Annual Meeting of the ELRA/ISCA Special Interest Group on Under-Resourced Languages, SIGUL 2022 - held in conjunction with the International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, LREC 2022 - Proceedings).

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abstract = "We have developed an open source web reader in Iceland for under-resourced languages. The web reader was developed due to the need for a free and good quality web reader for languages which fall outside the scope of commercially available web readers. It relies on a text-to-speech (TTS) pipeline accessed via a cloud service. The web reader was developed using the Icelandic TTS voices Alfur and Dilja, but could be connected to any language which has a TTS pipeline. The design of our web reader focuses on functionality, adaptability and user friendliness. Therefore, the web reader's feature set heavily overlaps with the minimal features necessary to provide a good web reading experience while still being extensible enough to be adapted to work for other languages, high-resourced and under-resourced. The web reader works well on all the major web browsers and has a Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 Level AA: Acceptable compliance, meaning that it works well for the largest user groups, people in under-resourced languages with visual impairments and difficulty reading. The code for our web reader is available and published with an Apache 2.0 license at https://github.com/cadia-lvl/WebRICE, which includes a simple demo of the project.",

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note = "Funding Information: The authors thank Luke O'brien, Tiro ehf22, F{\'e}lag lesblindra {\'a} {\'I}slandi (The Iceland Dyslexia Association)23, and Blindraf{\'e}lagi{\dh} (Icelandic Association of the Visually Impaired)24. This project was funded by the Language Technology programme for Icelandic 2019-2023. The programme, which is managed and coordinated by Almannar{\'o}mur25, is funded by the Icelandic Ministry of Education, Science and Culture. Funding Information: The authors thank Luke O{\textquoteright}brien, Tiro ehf22, F{\'e}lag les-blindra {\'a} {\'I}slandi (The Iceland Dyslexia Association)23, and Blindraf{\'e}lagi{\dh} (Icelandic Association of the Visually Impaired)24. This project was funded by the Language Technology programme for Icelandic 2019-2023. The programme, which is managed and coordinated by Almannar{\'o}mur25, is funded by the Icelandic Ministry of Education, Science and Culture. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} European Language Resources Association (ELRA), licensed under CC-BY-NC-4.0.; 1st Annual Meeting of the ELRA/ISCA Special Interest Group on Under-Resourced Languages, SIGUL 2022 ; Conference date: 20-06-2022 Through 25-06-2022",

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publisher = "European Language Resources Association (ELRA)",

pages = "10--15",

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Fong, JY, Gunnarsson, PD, Porsteinsdóttir, S, Örnólfsson, GT & Gudnason, J 2022, An Open Source Web Reader for Under-Resourced Languages. in M Melero, S Sakti & C Soria (eds), 1st Annual Meeting of the ELRA/ISCA Special Interest Group on Under-Resourced Languages, SIGUL 2022 - held in conjunction with the International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, LREC 2022 - Proceedings. 1st Annual Meeting of the ELRA/ISCA Special Interest Group on Under-Resourced Languages, SIGUL 2022 - held in conjunction with the International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, LREC 2022 - Proceedings, European Language Resources Association (ELRA), pp. 10-15, 1st Annual Meeting of the ELRA/ISCA Special Interest Group on Under-Resourced Languages, SIGUL 2022, Marseille, France, 20/06/22.

An Open Source Web Reader for Under-Resourced Languages. / Fong, Judy Y.; Gunnarsson, Porsteinn Daði; Porsteinsdóttir, Sunneva et al.
1st Annual Meeting of the ELRA/ISCA Special Interest Group on Under-Resourced Languages, SIGUL 2022 - held in conjunction with the International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, LREC 2022 - Proceedings. ed. / Maite Melero; Sakriani Sakti; Claudia Soria. European Language Resources Association (ELRA), 2022. p. 10-15 (1st Annual Meeting of the ELRA/ISCA Special Interest Group on Under-Resourced Languages, SIGUL 2022 - held in conjunction with the International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, LREC 2022 - Proceedings).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › peer-review

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Fong JY, Gunnarsson PD, Porsteinsdóttir S, Örnólfsson GT, Gudnason J. An Open Source Web Reader for Under-Resourced Languages. In Melero M, Sakti S, Soria C, editors, 1st Annual Meeting of the ELRA/ISCA Special Interest Group on Under-Resourced Languages, SIGUL 2022 - held in conjunction with the International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, LREC 2022 - Proceedings. European Language Resources Association (ELRA). 2022. p. 10-15. (1st Annual Meeting of the ELRA/ISCA Special Interest Group on Under-Resourced Languages, SIGUL 2022 - held in conjunction with the International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, LREC 2022 - Proceedings).

An Open Source Web Reader for Under-Resourced Languages

Abstract

Publication series

Conference

Bibliographical note

Other keywords

Fingerprint

Cite this