eGuideDog

(Jul 26, 2008)

eGuideDog is a software system for the blind. Now voice web browser, text-to-speech software are under development. More software such as voice mail client and special tools will be developed. An easy-to-use Linux distribution for the blind is the goal.

The features of most eGuideDog software are below:

1. It's mainly based on the traditional Unix interface - command line interface (CLI) not the GUI. I think it's much easier to understand for the blind.
2. It's a free software which obeys GPL v2. I don't agree that we should earn money from the visually impaired. A free solution should exist for the poor while necessary fee for providing better service is understandable for companies.
3. It's more than something like Blynx (Lynx + sound). Artificial Intelligence will be used for a better communication.

eGuideDog voice web browser is focus on how to present HTML in speech rather than in text. It's written in Perl and supports eSpeak TTS engine. Some techniques Such as re-constructing the HTML structure, summarizing the content and filtering Ads. etc will be used.

TTS (Text to Speech) is a base software of the whole system. TTS is a kind of technology that generates sound according to text. This technology has been performing very good now. The electric voice of Stephen Hocking is a good example.

eSpeak is an TTS written in C++ and the software structure is much simpler than Festival. It supports both Mandarin and Cantonese of Chinese now. Anyone like linguistics and Chinese can join us to improve the package eSpeak-Chinese. I've also wrote a Perl module extension for eSpeak (Speech::eSpeak). However, Some functions have not been implemented for my poor Perl skill.

Another Chinese text-to-speech (TTS) software is eGuideDog TTS (Ekho, 余音). Unlike eSpeak, Ekho is designed in an easier way but bigger package size. It may produce more natural voice than eSpeak because it uses human voice. It supports Cantonese and Mandarin now.