Reading system

• US 6,199,042 B1
• Filed: 06/19/1998
• Issued: 03/06/2001
• Est. Priority Date: 06/19/1998
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Kurzweil Educational Systems Incorporated (Cambium Learning Group Incorporated)
• Original Assignee: L&H Applications USA, Inc
• Inventors: Kurzweil, Raymond C.
• Primary Examiner(s): Hudspeth, David R.
• Assistant Examiner(s): ZINTEL, HAROLD ALBERT
• Application Number:
  US09/100,299
• Time in Patent Office: 991 Days
• Field of Search: 704/260, 704/258, 704/243, 704/503, 704/504, 704/278, 434/317, 434/318, 434/319, 434/308, 434/307.A, 434/307.R, 434/309, 434/185, 345/901, 345/957, 345/956, 345/145, 345/146, 345/162, 345/208, 345/173, 345/340, 846/09
• US Class Current: 704/260
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 17/006 with audible presentation of the material to be studied audio and audio-visual teaching apparatus in general G09B5/04, G09B5/06
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 19/04 Speaking with audible presentation of the material to be studied G09B5/04
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 5/065 Combinations of audio and video presentations, e.g. videotapes, videodiscs, television systems

Abstract

A reading system includes a computer and a mass storage device and software including instructions for causing a computer to accept an image file generated from optically scanning an image of a document. The software converts the image file into a converted text file that includes text information, and positional information associating the text with the position of its representation in the image file. The software records the voice of an operator of the reading machine as a series of voice samples in synchronization with a highlighting indicia applied to a displayed representation of the document and stores the series of voice samples in a data structure that associates the voice samples with displayed representation. The reading machine plays back the stored, recorded voice samples corresponding to words in the document as displayed by the monitor while highlighting is applied to the words in the displayed document.

Claims

1. A computer program residing on a computer readable medium comprising instructions for causing a computer to:

record the voice of an operator of the reading machine as a plurality of voice samples in synchronization with a highlighting indicia applied to a displayed document; and

store the plurality of voice samples in a data structure in a manner that associates the plurality of voice samples with displayed positions of words in the document.

2. The computer program product of claim 1 further comprising instructions for causing a computer to:

apply highlighting to the displayed document a word at a time to indicate the word the operator should pronounce into a microphone.

3. The computer program product of claim 1 wherein the voice samples are stored along with positional information obtained from a text-based data structure.

4. The computer program product of claim 3 wherein the voice samples are stored along with links back to a text-based data structure that contains the positional information of the recorded words.

5. The computer program product of claim 3 further comprising instructions for causing the computer to playback voice samples, and use a visual sound editor to permit an operator to identify a word or words corresponding to the voice samples and correct the positional information or links back to the text-based data structure for the word or words.

6. The computer program product of claim 2 wherein the record process uses a large vocabulary continuous speech recognition software system to transcribe the recorded speech, and mark where voice samples for words are in a voice sample data structure.

7. The computer program product of claim 2 wherein the speech recognition software uses transcribed text provided from applying optical character recognition to an image representation of a document to produce the text file.