Korean language math-to-speech rules for digital books for people with reading disabilities and their usability evaluation

Abstract

Although Digital Accessible Information System, an international digital talking book standard, is conducting active research on upper level education for people with reading disabilities, special components like images or formulas are difficult to read aloud in Korean. Therefore, this paper defines Korean math-to-speech rules for Contents Mathematical Markup Language based on the formulas used in the Korean middle school and high school freshman curriculum. Based on the proposed rules, a program that turns formulas expressed in Contents Mathematical Markup Language into speech was also designed through Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations. Finally, a performance test was conducted to determine both the accuracy of the transformed formulas and the clarity of formulas when read aloud.