SeeReader: An (Almost) Eyes-Free Mobile Rich Document Viewer

TL;DR

SeeReader is a mobile document viewer that combines text-to-speech with visual content recognition to enable users to listen to rich documents while remaining aware of their surroundings.

Contribution

It introduces a novel system that integrates TTS with automatic content recognition and presentation control for safer, eyes-free mobile document reading.

Findings

Enables users to listen to rich documents while maintaining environmental awareness

Improves safety and convenience in mobile document reading scenarios

Successfully integrates visual content recognition with TTS for enhanced accessibility

Abstract

Reading documents on mobile devices is challenging. Not only are screens small and difficult to read, but also navigating an environment using limited visual attention can be difficult and potentially dangerous. Reading content aloud using text-tospeech (TTS) processing can mitigate these problems, but only for content that does not include rich visual information. In this paper, we introduce a new technique, SeeReader, that combines TTS with automatic content recognition and document presentation control that allows users to listen to documents while also being notified of important visual content. Together, these services allow users to read rich documents on mobile devices while maintaining awareness of their visual environment.