Documents mean more than just paper!

Abstract

With the advent of electronic documents, information is available in more than just its visual form—electronic information is display-independent. Though the principal mode of display is still visual, we can now produce alternative renderings of this information—we have designed a computing system, A ST ER, that produces an audio view. The visuasl mode of communication is characterized by the spatial nature of the display and the eye's ability to actively access parts of this display. The reader is active, while the rendering itself is passive. This active-passive role is reversed by the temporal nature of oral communication: the information flows actively past a passive listener. The passive nature of listening prohibits multiple views—it is impossible to first obtain a high-level view and then “look” at portions of the information in detail. These shortcomings become particularly severe when presenting complex mathematics orally. We overcome these problems of oral communication by developing the notion of audio formatting—a process that renders information structure in a manner attuned to an auditory display. The audio layout present in the output conveys information structure. A ST ER is an interactive system—the ability to browse information structure and obtain multiple views makes the listener an active participant in oral communication. The resulting audio documents achieve effective oral communication of structured information from a wide range of sources, including literary texts and highly technical documents containing complex mathematics.