Up to 25 percent of those who use the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia would prefer to take in information in spoken form. Converted to the number of users is about 125 million users a month. To satisfy this need now start the project Wiki Speech. With the help of speech Articles in Wikipedia can be read in English, Swedish and to some extent Arab. The project is run by the Wikimedia Sweden.
I’ve worked with people who have disabilities and have gone and pondered long on what you can do to make the information on Wikipedia even more accessible, said John Andersson, Project Manager Wikimedia Sweden.
a year ago, he began searching his money at the Swedish National Post and Telecom Agency for the project. After a feasibility study in autumn 2015 can now start the shots tomorrow, Tuesday 15 March. And it will go away. Later this year, those who want to test the new functionality via a special server. In 2017, the opportunity to have the text read by a synthetic voice to be implemented on the Wikimedia servers
The idea is to put together the parts of the speech available as open source software, and then sharpening the result with the help of research at KTH Södermalms talteknologiservice.
the speech engine will be an addition to the platform that Wikipedia uses, MediaWiki. Written in open source becomes free to use and develop further by others.
Swedish, English and to some extent Arab is the first language.
– Now we lay the foundation. In the long term, we hope that all the 292 languages present in Wikipedia can be covered, said John Andersson.
The idea is that users themselves should contribute, not least by highlighting when the pronunciation is not as it should be.
– as with all other content on Wikipedia can all help to improve the synthesizer so that over time allows more and more natural. Anyone who can write phonetically text can of course change it immediately.
The need for spoken text is especially important in countries where illiteracy is common.
– When the Ebola crisis was at its worst was Wikipedia, the main source of medical information that was easy to grasp. It had been able to reach even more the case that stood there had gone to listen to rather than read, notes John Andersson.
The development of TTS Wiki Speech funded by the National Post and Telecom Agency that goes in with 2, SEK 8 million. KTH is contributing another one million crowns. The research project is ongoing until September 2017.
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