JP2002014893A - Web page guiding server for user who use screen reading out software - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To contribute to making the barrier free for a society by supporting the action of a visually handicapped person or the like to use the Internet by using screen reading out software. SOLUTION: Category classification is operated based on terms included in Web pages collected from a Web site or the locations of the Web pages. The descriptive structure of the markup language of the collected Web pages is analyzed, and a voicing proper value is calculated based on the quantity or rate of text elements to be effectively voiced by screen reading out software and the either elements. Then, a Web page catalog is prepared by arranging each page to which the voicing proper value is attached according to the classification. The Web page catalog to whirl the voicing proper values is attached is expressed in the markup language so as to be effectively voiced by the picture reading software on a client so that a catalog Web page for guiding the Web page to be hyper-linked to each Web page is prepared, and can be transmitted to a user computer which performs access as necessary.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a method of linking screen reading software to a browser of a client (user's personal computer) to convert various Web pages on the Internet to a person who listens by converting the information of the Web pages. About the web page information server to be introduced.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Recent information technology has created new systems one after another with the aim of making it possible for people with various disabilities to use personal computers and the Internet. One of them is screen reading software that works with Web browsers. This is also called voice software or voice browser. In addition to displaying the Web page obtained by the user's personal computer (client) via the Internet using a browser, the Web browser also performs data processing to read out textual information (sentences) written in the Web page and outputs the voice to the speaker Output from This opens the way for visually impaired people to access the Internet on their own. Examples of this type of screen reading software include the "IBM Homepage"
"Leader", "Eye assist" manufactured by Fujitsu Higashi Hokkaido System Engineering, "Voice Surfing" manufactured by Amedia, etc. are known.

[0003]

The outline of the basic operation of the screen reading software is as follows. First, read out the page title. Read out the contents of the page in a male voice. Characters with hyperlinks are read out in a female voice. If there is an image, if there is a comment,
Read it aloud. If the image has hyperlinks, read them out if they have comments. (If there is no comment, read out the file name of the link destination.) For pages using frames, generate your own page information and read it out. (The user can use that clue to choose which frame to read.) Expressions using Java Script or Java applets are ignored.

[0004] As can be seen from the above brief description, the screen reading software does not output all the information included in the display screen of the Web page displayed on the screen. Conversely, the display screen has a function of reading out information that is not visualized. Therefore, if a Web page is created on the assumption that it is used by screen reading software, it can be a very kind and useful Web page for the visually impaired. However, many web pages currently displayed on the Internet are produced without considering screen reading software used by visually impaired people and the like. Therefore, even if a Web page obtained without any selection is processed by screen reading software, useful information is rarely obtained by voice. Rather, in many cases, meaningless read-out voices are uttered.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned conventional problems, and has as its object to provide a Web page useful for a person who uses image reading software from a huge number of Web pages displayed on the Internet. An object of the present invention is to provide a web page information server for executing an automatic process for introducing a page.

[0006]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The basic invention is a web page guide server for users who use screen reading software, which accesses a number of web sites on the Internet in a timely manner. Means to collect web pages exhibited by the company, means to categorize web pages based on terms contained in the collected web pages, location of web pages, etc., and analysis of description structure of markup language of collected web pages Means for obtaining a voice suitability value based on the amount or ratio of a sentence element that is effectively voiced by screen reading software and a non-text element, and attaching the voice suitability value by this means to each of the above. A means for creating a Web page catalog that organizes Web pages according to the classification, and a screen reading software on a client for effective voice conversion. Said to represent the Web page catalog with the voice of proper value by the mark-up language each Web
Catalog W for web page information that hyperlinks to the page
It is characterized by comprising means for creating and storing an eb page, and means for delivering the list Web page to the accessing user computer as desired.

[0007] In the Web page information server, preferably, the list Web page describes only the introduction items of the Web page whose speech suitability value is better than the standard.

Preferably, the Web page information server retrieves the Web page in response to a request by the hyperlink from the user computer that has received the catalog Web page, and includes the Web page in the Web page. A means for removing elements unsuitable for speech conversion to be transmitted to the user computer is added.

[0009]

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS A web page guide server according to the present invention connects to the Internet, communicates with a user computer (client), and returns an HTTP response to an HTTP request from the user computer. Further, the Web page information server of the present invention communicates with various Web servers operated on the Internet, issues HTTP requests to these Web servers, and acquires various Web pages as HTTP responses to the HTTP requests. Since the above-described mechanism is a matter of course, it is not particularly illustrated or redundantly described.

The Web page information server accesses a number of Web sites on the Internet in a timely manner and collects Web pages displayed by the Web sites. A web site to be accessed may be determined in advance, or a web site carrying an article on a certain matter, such as a so-called robot search engine, may be collected while searching. A large number of collected Web pages are temporarily stored on a hard disk or the like, and the Web pages are classified into categories, and a classification identifier is assigned to each Web page. The items of the category classification include, for example, “news”, “entertainment”, and “travel”. The present invention does not particularly limit the algorithm for classification. As a well-known method,
It is also possible to categorize based on the terms included in the articles on the web page, or to categorize based on the web page obtained from which web site, that is, the web page location (URL).

The web page information server analyzes the description structure of the markup language of the collected web page, and divides the sentence elements that are effectively vocalized by screen reading software and the elements that are not properly vocalized. Are measured, and a voice suitability value is obtained based on the amounts and ratios. Some of the basic regularities of the algorithm for calculating the aptitude for speech are as follows. The greater the number of characters constituting a general sentence, the larger the speech suitability value is calculated. The simpler the description layout structure of the sentence, the larger the voice suitability value. If a title by a character string is defined, the voice suitability value is added. The more numbers and symbols, the lower the aptitude for speech. The larger the amount of the image is, the smaller the voice suitability value is calculated. If a frame is used, the more the frame structure is complicated, the smaller the appropriateness value for speech is calculated. The more abundantly used Java Scripts and Java applets, the smaller the voice suitability value. The more the table structure is used, the smaller the aptitude for speech conversion is calculated.

The aptitude for speech conversion of each web page is obtained by the above algorithm, and the aptitude value is classified into, for example, five grades, and the grade is recorded in association with each web page.

[0013] The above pre-processing is performed by using the above-mentioned W with the voice suitability value.
This is equivalent to creating an eb page catalog. Based on the web page list with the aptitude for voice conversion, the web page information server next creates the list web page. The catalog Web page is portal content prepared by the Web page information server for a client (user computer) using screen reading software.
An outline of an example of the catalog Web page is shown in FIGS. A predetermined U from the user computer to the Internet
When the HTTP request designating the RL is issued, the Web page information server responds to the request by requesting the list Web.
The page is sent to the Internet as an HTTP response, and the list Web page is received by the user computer. In the user computer, the catalog Web page is displayed by a browser, and the article content of the catalog Web page is read aloud by screen reading software associated with the browser.

[0014] The catalog Web page is premised on being processed by screen reading software, and the contents of the article are read out in order in an easy-to-understand manner, and information can be accurately transmitted to the visually impaired just by listening to the contents. It is designed as follows.

FIG. 1 shows an example of a display format of the first page of such a list Web page. When this is processed by screen-reading software, the voice of the male voice reads "Start page for voice-reading software", and the voice of the female voice reads "News" (the female voice indicates that the hyper ring is set. ), Followed by a male voice, “Today's breaking news, domestic news, overseas news,
You can enjoy the weather forecast etc. " In the same manner, the text of the following line is read out in order.

[0016] The start page of the catalog web page in this example includes a number of web pages for guiding the user to "news".
It is divided into categories such as "entertainment" and "travel". One of the items, “News,” includes a Web page titled “Breaking News Today”.
Page, a web page titled Domestic News, a web page titled Overseas News,
This means that a Web page titled Weather Forecast is included.

During the period in which "You can enjoy today's breaking news, domestic news, overseas news, weather forecasts, etc." and the period until the next category "entertainment" begins to be read out,
When the user operates the computer to issue a selection event, the operation is the same as when a “news” item with a hyperlink is clicked. In other words, HTTP from the user computer to this Web page information server
A request is issued, and the second page of the list Web page shown in FIG. 2 is delivered to the user computer in an HTTP response from the server.

As shown in FIG. 2, on the second page of the catalog web page, the titles of four web pages classified into the category "news", today's breaking news, domestic news, overseas news, and weather forecast are displayed. Each title has a hyperlink at the location of its web page. Also,
Each title has a comment, "This page is very suitable for text-to-speech software" or "This page is not very suitable for text-to-speech software", based on the above-mentioned voice suitability value of each web page.

The page illustrated in FIG. 2 is displayed on the browser of the user computer and is processed by screen reading software. First, "news" is issued by a male voice, followed by "breaking news" by a female voice, and then by a female voice. A male voice reads, "This page is very suitable for text-to-speech software," followed by a female voice, "Domestic News," followed by a male voice, "This page is very suitable for text-to-speech software." The reading will proceed in this manner.

During the period when a female voice reads "Domestic News" and then a male voice reads "This page is extremely suitable for text-to-speech software" and during a certain period immediately after that, the user When the user operates the computer and issues a selection event, the operation is the same as when a “local news” item with a hyperlink is clicked. In other words, the home page of “Domestic News” (UR
L) is transmitted, and a web page of “domestic news” is transmitted from the corresponding web site to the user computer. The page is displayed on the browser of the user computer (an example of the display is shown in FIG. 3),
The content of the article is read aloud by the screen reading software. Since this page has obtained a high vocalization suitability value by the Web page information server, it is a text-based article content suitable for reading as illustrated in FIG.

In the above example, the Web page presented to the user computer is such that the user computer issues a request by a hyperlink to the Web site displaying the Web page and receives the corresponding Web page. In another embodiment of the present invention, the hyperlink destination is set to the present Web page information server, and the corresponding Web page temporarily stored in the present server (or obtained via the present server). (The corresponding Web page) to the user computer. In this case, it is preferable that the Web page information server processes the original structure of the Web page obtained from the Web site, removes unnecessary elements for listening to information using screen reading software, and processes the Web page. The later Web page is transmitted to the user computer. that way,
The time required for communication of image data and the like can be reduced, and the speed of page processing by a browser and screen reading software can be increased.

[0022]

The Web page information server according to the present invention collects Web pages useful for those who use image reading software from a huge number of Web pages displayed on the Internet, and provides image reading software. Executes automatic processing to introduce the collected Web pages with hyperlinks using expressions that are effectively converted to speech. In particular,
In the web page introduction process, the user is informed of the degree of suitability for speech conversion of each page, so that content suitable for reading aloud speech can be browsed efficiently. This makes it easier for visually impaired people and others to use the Internet, contributing to barrier-free society.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing an outline of the contents of an article on the first page of an inventory Web page according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram exemplifying the contents of an article on a second page transmitted when an item “news” in FIG. 1 is clicked;

FIG. 3 is a diagram exemplifying the contents of an article on a Web page delivered when an item “domestic news” in FIG. 2 is clicked;

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. A web page guide server for a user who uses screen reading software, which accesses a number of web sites on the Internet in a timely manner and
a means to collect web pages displayed by the eb site,
Means for classifying categories based on the terms contained in the collected Web pages and the location of the Web pages, and analyzing the description structure of the collected Web page markup language to be effectively spoken by screen reading software Means for obtaining a speech suitability value based on the amount or ratio of a sentence element and a non-sentence element, and a W which arranges the web pages according to the classification by attaching the speech suitability value by this means.
means for creating an eb page catalog and hyperlinking to each of the web pages by expressing the web page catalog with the vocalization suitability value in a markup language so as to be effectively voiced by screen reading software on the client. It is characterized by comprising means for creating and storing a catalog Web page for guiding a Web page, and means for delivering the catalog Web page to a user computer who has accessed the Web page as desired. 2. The web page information server according to claim 1, wherein the list web page includes only an introduction item for the web page whose vocalization suitability value is better than a standard. Features. 3. The web page information server according to claim 1, wherein the web page guide server responds to the request by the hyperlink from the user computer that has received the list web page. At the same time, the web page is sent to the user computer after removing unsuitable elements included in the web page.