Oku 4.0

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. 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! Microsoft Academic Days

3. 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 Microsoft Academic Days

4. 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) Microsoft Academic Days

5. Oku3 vs Oku4 • Both provide calendar, clock, calculator, HTML browser, word processor and mail clients for pop3 and smtp servers. Microsoft Academic Days

6. 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 Microsoft Academic Days

7. 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. Microsoft Academic Days

8. Syllables in Turkish • All letters: 29 • Two letter syllables: 8 x 21 = 168 • Three letter syllables: 8 x 212 = 3,528 • Four letter syllables: 8 x 213 = 74,088 • Five letter syllables: 8 x 214 = 1,555,848 • Six letter syllables: 8 x 215 = 32,672,808 • Total: 34,306,440 Too high… Microsoft Academic Days

9. 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. Microsoft Academic Days

10. 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” Microsoft Academic Days

11. 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. Microsoft Academic Days

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

13. Availability • Free • Available at www.cs.bilkent.edu.tr/oku • For those w/o internet access • We mail a copy on a CDROM Microsoft Academic Days

14. Demo by Engin Demir Microsoft Academic Days