Development of a System and Interface for Speech Synthesis in Ukrainian for Websites

Abstract

The paper describes the system of content synthesis and sounding on websites in Ukrainian, designed to simplify the consumption of content for the visually impaired, which features easy integration into the most popular content management system on sites, namely CMC Wordpress. Currently, people with visual impairments are severely limited in their use of Internet products because most web resources are not tailored to their needs. Modern information technology allows such people to receive information along with healthy ones thanks to solutions developed by scientists and engineers from different countries. Text information can be delivered to the visually impaired with a magnifying glass or by enlarging the font by software, blind - by sounding the text using computer programs or displaying texts on the Braille screen of the monitor. This is an effective solution, but the choice of methods for reproducing such information must be fully provided by people with disabilities themselves, which is a significant problem due to the significant time spent on information consumption. To facilitate the perception of visually impaired people when using websites, an international standard for webmasters has been developed - a guide to web content accessibility called the W3 Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Consortium 2.0. The standard describes in detail the requirements of visually impaired people that are recommended to be met in order for them to view the website without any problems. The basic provisions of WCAG 2.0 will describe the parameters and algorithms for scaling, clustering and separation of information by programs for the visually impaired and provide recommendations for writing website code. However, to implement such recommendations, webmasters need to learn new programming principles and algorithms and use additional development tools. This is often difficult, requiring additional training, which entails non-compliance by webmasters with such requirements.