ReadSpeaker Launches Web-Based Math Audio Reader for Publishers to Make Their Educational Content More Accessible

UPPSALA, Sweden, September 6, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

Today, ReadSpeaker® launched a new feature to help learners who want to listen to math courses or any online content that uses mathematical notations. Now, learning, teaching and research websites worldwide can propose a talking version of their mathematical content so as to help their end-users who have problems reading better understand and learn. This new and exciting service will help publishers facilitate the access to their academic and professional content and help improve learning outcomes.

ReadSpeaker has developed a unique system that reads aloud mathematical notations in the W3C standard MathML language or presented as text (ASCII). ReadSpeaker has developed a collection of rules to read presentation MathML, which currently is the most used part of the MathML language, as well as a dictionary for an improved reading of text based expressions.

The ReadSpeaker framework that comes out of the box can suit most purposes, but it can also be customized for specific customer needs. For example, customers might want some mathematical expressions to be read out loud in a certain way depending on the knowledge level of the end-users they are targeting. This level of personalization is now available with the ReadSpeaker® Enterprise™ solution that features the math reading.

ReadSpeaker can read the 100 most common mathematical symbols by default and can add others on demand for customers. This includes small and capital Latin letters, the most common small Greek letters, some operators like Nabla, integrals, differentials, sums, products and coproducts, arrows, etc. In ASCII math representation, ReadSpeaker reads standard functions like trigonometry and logarithms, as well as simple fractions using slashes, parentheses, simple exponents and indices using ^ and other standard ones. Algebra like a+b, b-c, xy, p*q and simple square roots are read.

As an example of how it works, an equation in MathML could be rendered like this in a web browser (please click on link below):

     (Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20110906/478806 )

And ReadSpeaker will read it like this:

"x equals, fraction, minus b plus minus square root of, b squared minus 4 a c, divided by 2 a."

For more examples, please visit the ReadSpeaker Math Demo page

"This is the first on-demand, device independent and streaming web service on the market that speech-enables advanced math in a natural way using the latest online text-to-speech technology," says Niclas Bergström, ReadSpeaker Founder and CEO.

Share this news with the following tweet: @ReadSpeaker launches first on-demand audio math reader for publishers using #MathML http://bit.ly/r0d4uG #a11y #speechasaservice #tts #math

About ReadSpeaker (http://www.readspeaker.com)
ReadSpeaker® is the worldwide leader in online text to speech. In 1999, ReadSpeaker pioneered the first-ever speech-enabling application for websites. Today, the company's web-based text-to-speech services are used by thousands of websites/mobile apps and millions of users worldwide every month. ReadSpeaker speech-enables online content on the fly in 35 languages and 90 voices. The company provides a portfolio of web-based text-to-speech solutions for websites, mobile sites, mobile apps, RSS feeds, online documents and forms, as well as online campaigns. More than 5000 corporate, media, government, and nonprofit customers around the world use ReadSpeaker online text-to-speech solutions.

Contact Details
Aloisia Gabat
Roy Lindemann
[email protected]
Tel: +33(0)1-58-62-20-83
Twitter: twitter.com/readspeaker

SOURCE ReadSpeaker