Describing online videos with text-to-speech narration

Abstract

Most online videos are inaccessible for blind and visually impaired people. Those who are illiterate or barely literate also face difficulties with many videos. An audio description (AD) can help, but is rarely provided for actual online videos because of the time and trouble required. The technology platform we are developing uses a speech synthesis technology to add ADs to online videos at minimal cost. We are developing an authoring tool for AD scripts, a Web browser for playing the described videos, and a text-based format to handle the AD scripts. © 2010 ACM.