JP2009130398A - Information processing apparatus and method - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To hold alternative character string information given to an image when printing an electronic document. <P>SOLUTION: An analysis means analyzes a structured document. When the analysis means detects a link to image data, an acquisition means obtains the image data. When the analysis means detects a character string explaining the image data, an embedding means embeds the character string into the image data obtained by the acquisition means, as a digital watermark. An extracted alternative character string is read out in response to detection of watermark information. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2009,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention relates to a technique for realizing information security for a visually impaired person.

  With the spread of communication infrastructure such as the Internet and mobile phones, information exchange and services using electronic documents such as WEB and e-mail have become widely used. Since many electronic documents in circulation are character information and image information, it is not easy for visually impaired people to use. Various efforts have been made to guarantee information so that visually impaired people can use information services without any problems.

  For example, software called a screen reader that reads aloud by using a technology for converting character information displayed on the screen into speech is commercially available. Representative products such as Freedom Scientific's Jaws and IBM's Home Page Reader are widely known. Further, Patent Document 1 discloses an example of a braille display that realizes tactile reading by converting character information into braille. By using a screen reader or a device such as Patent Document 1, character information can be converted into speech and information can be obtained.

  Assuming the use of such a screen reader, JIS X8341-3 of Japanese Industrial Standards provides guidelines for creating web contents so that information can be obtained also about image data. It is recommended that an alternative character string that describes the content of an image be assigned as an ALT attribute to a tag that describes a reference to image data.

  In addition, Patent Document 2 discloses an information presentation device that extracts information related to an image such as an image author's name, creation date, and title from header information included in the image data and reads it out by voice.

Japanese Patent No. 3732756 JP 2002-175176 A

  Even for an electronic document that complies with the guidelines of JIS X8341-3, the character string assigned to the ALT attribute at the time of printing is not printed. That is, there is a problem that even if an electronic document is described with consideration for the visually impaired, information about the image is lost when the electronic document is printed. Even in the information presentation device disclosed in Patent Document 2, when the information is printed, the information in the header portion of the image is not printed, so that the visually impaired cannot obtain information on the image.

  On the other hand, a method is conceivable in which an alternative character string assigned to the ALT attribute is printed at the time of printing. However, there is a case where it is not desired to change the layout of the printed document.

  In order to solve the above-described problems, an object of the present invention is to provide an information processing apparatus that embeds and prints an alternative character string added to an image as a digital watermark. It is another object of the present invention to provide an information processing apparatus that extracts a substitute character string from an image of a printed document and presents the extracted substitute character string by voice.

  According to one aspect of the present invention, an analysis unit that analyzes a structured document, an acquisition unit that acquires the image data when the analysis unit detects a link to image data, and the analysis unit that includes the image data An information processing apparatus is provided that includes an embedding unit that embeds the character string as a digital watermark in the image data acquired by the acquiring unit.

  According to the present invention, an alternative character string of an image described in an original electronic document can be held through the process of printing and scanning the electronic document. Therefore, when a visually handicapped person scans a printed matter of an electronic document and confirms the contents by voice, the information of the substitute character string of the image is not lost, so the same information as the information obtained from the original electronic document is used. It can be obtained and convenience is improved. Furthermore, since it is not necessary to print the substitute character string directly, the same document layout can be maintained between the electronic document display and the printed matter.

  DESCRIPTION OF EMBODIMENTS Hereinafter, preferred embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the drawings. In addition, this invention is not limited to the following embodiment, It shows only the specific example advantageous for implementation of this invention. In addition, not all combinations of features described in the following embodiments are indispensable as means for solving the problems of the present invention.

<Embodiment 1>
In the present embodiment, a case where an electronic document described in HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), which is a representative markup language, is described as an example, but the present invention is not limited to this. The present embodiment can be applied to any structured document described in a description language that controls the structure and layout of a document according to a predetermined format such as HTML.

  Hereinafter, a descriptor used for controlling the layout of a document is referred to as a tag.

(Configuration of information processing device)
FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating a functional configuration of the information processing apparatus according to the present embodiment.

  In FIG. 1, the information processing apparatus 100 includes a display unit 101, a printing unit 102, a scanning unit 103, an audio output unit 104, an electronic document processing unit 110, and a printed document processing unit 120.

  The display unit 101 includes a display device such as a liquid crystal display, and displays various types of information including images, characters, and the like. The printing unit 102 includes a printing device such as a printer or a copying machine, and prints characters and images. The scanning unit 103 is composed of a scanner device such as a scanner or a copying machine, and converts characters and images on the paper surface of the printed matter into digital data and reads the digital data. The audio output unit 104 includes a D / A conversion circuit and a speaker, converts a digital audio signal into an analog audio signal, and outputs the analog audio signal from the speaker. The electronic document processing unit 110 acquires an electronic document and performs processing associated with display or printing of the acquired electronic document 191. The print document processing unit 120 acquires the print document 192 via the scan unit 103, and outputs a sound that reads out the content of the document from the sound output unit 104.

  Reference numeral 191 denotes an electronic document described in HTML. The electronic document 191 is stored in an external server (not shown) connected via the Internet or a LAN. Further, it may be stored in a storage device such as an HDD (not shown) included in the information processing apparatus 100. Reference numeral 192 denotes a print document obtained by printing an electronic document.

  FIG. 2 shows an example of an electronic document 191 described in HTML. The content of the document is an access guide to the conference hall. An example of the result of processing and displaying or printing the electronic document of FIG. 2 by the electronic document processing unit 110 is shown in FIG.

  Next, details of the electronic document processing unit 110 and the print document processing unit 120 will be described.

  As shown in FIG. 1, the electronic document processing unit 110 includes an electronic document acquisition unit 111, a document structure analysis unit 112, an alternative character string extraction unit 113, a document display control unit 114, a document print control unit 115, and a watermark information embedding unit 116. Consists of

  The electronic document acquisition unit 111 acquires the electronic document 191.

  The document structure analysis unit 112 analyzes the acquired electronic document, and acquires the structure of the document according to the attribute of each element of the document described by the tag. If the acquired electronic document includes image link information, the link destination image is acquired via the electronic document acquisition unit 111. Further, when an alternative character string is described for the image by the tag, the alternative character string extraction unit 113 extracts the alternative character string. In FIG. 2, a portion 201 surrounded by a broken-line frame is a description of information about image data. In HTML, the link information to the image is described in the part following "<img src =" at the beginning of the line, and the alternative character string is described in the part following "alt =". The portion 201 in FIG. 2 describes that the image is “map1.jpg” and that the alternative character string of this image is “Access Map Shin-Yokohama”. Therefore, when the information processing apparatus 100 targets an electronic document described in HTML, the alternative character string extraction unit 113 extracts a character string following “alt =”. Document structure information, image data, images, substitute character strings, and the like acquired by the document structure analysis unit 112 and the substitute character string extraction unit 113 are temporarily stored in a storage device (not shown) provided in the information processing apparatus 100 such as a RAM. .

  The document display control unit 114 controls the content displayed on the display unit 101 according to the document structure analyzed by the document structure analysis unit 112.

  The document print control unit 115 generates print data that can be received by the printing unit 102 in accordance with the document structure analyzed by the document structure analysis unit 112. At this time, for an image having a corresponding substitute character string, the watermark information embedding unit 116 embeds the substitute character string as an electronic watermark in the image data. In the case of the electronic document shown in FIG. 2, an alternative character string “Access Map Shin-Yokohama” is embedded in the corresponding image shown at 302 in FIG. 3 at the time of printing. For embedding the digital watermark, a known digital watermark technique such as a method disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-106624 can be used.

  Next, the print document processing unit 120 will be described in detail.

  As shown in FIG. 1, the print document processing unit 120 includes a scan image acquisition unit 121, a scan image processing unit 122, an audio generation unit 123, and a watermark information extraction unit 124.

  The scan image acquisition unit 121 acquires a scan image that is an image image obtained by scanning the print document 192 with the scan unit 103.

  The scan image processing unit 122 performs image processing on the acquired scan image using a known OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technique. First, the scanned image is separated into an image area and a text area, and the image area is left as an image, and the text area is subjected to character recognition to be converted into text.

  The sound generation unit 123 generates sound data that reads out the content of the document based on the electronic document configured by the scan image processing unit 122. When an image is included in the electronic document, the watermark information extraction unit 124 extracts text information included in the image, and generates voice data to be read out based on the extracted text information. If text information cannot be extracted from the image, read-out data is not generated for the image portion, or read-out data indicating that there is an image in the document, such as “It is an image”, may be generated. Note that, as a method of extracting the text that is shown through the image, an existing digital watermark technique is used in the same manner as the technique used for embedding text information in the watermark information embedding unit 116.

  Subsequently, the operation of the information processing apparatus 100 will be described.

(Explanation of watermark embedding flow)
First, the operation from electronic document acquisition to printing by the electronic document processing unit 110 will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG.

  In step S401, the electronic document acquisition unit 111 acquires an electronic document. At this time, the location of the electronic document to be acquired is not limited. It is possible to acquire an electronic document held in the same information processing apparatus 100 and an electronic document held in another apparatus or server connected via a network.

  Next, in the processes of steps S402 to S411, the document structure analysis unit 112 analyzes the acquired electronic document and acquires the structure of the electronic document. The document print control unit 115 generates print data for printing the electronic document based on the analysis result. The analysis of the electronic document is performed for each predetermined processing unit with respect to the description of the acquired electronic document. As processing units, for example, every row, every tag, etc. can be considered.

  When the document structure analysis unit 112 detects a link to image data as indicated by 201 in FIG. 2 (YES in S402), the electronic document acquisition unit 111 acquires the image data (S403). The acquired image data is temporarily held in the information processing apparatus 100. If an alternative character string corresponding to the image data is described (YES in S405), that is, if the document structure analysis unit 112 detects a character string explaining the image data, the alternative character string extraction unit 113 An alternative character string is extracted (S406). In an HTML document, a character string that describes image data is given by an alt attribute.

  In step S407, the watermark information embedding unit 116 performs processing for embedding the extracted substitute character string in the corresponding image data as a digital watermark. In step S408, the document print control unit 115 generates print data for the image data in which the digital watermark is embedded in step S407 (S408).

  When the above processing is applied to the electronic document shown in FIG. 2, the print data of the image in which the substitute character string “Access Map Shin-Yokohama” is embedded as a digital watermark in the image data map1.jpg described in 201 Is generated. That is, in the printing example shown in FIG. 3, the alternative character string is watermarked in the area 302.

  If the description to be processed is other than an image (NO in S402), the document structure analysis unit 112 appropriately processes the analysis of the document according to the description of the electronic document as in the case of a general HTML document (S404). . Based on the analysis result of S404, the document print control unit 115 generates data for printing (S410).

  If there is no description designating an alternative character string corresponding to the image in S405 (NO in S405), the document print control unit 115 generates print data for the image data acquired in S403 in S409.

  When all the processes are completed for the electronic document acquired in S401 (YES in S411), the print data generated by the document print control unit 115 is transferred to the printing unit 102, printed (S412), and the process ends. .

(Explanation of print document scanning / reading flow)
Next, the operation of the print document processing unit 120 that scans and acquires a print document and reads out the content of the scanned document by voice generation will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG.

  First, in step S501, the scan image acquisition unit 121 acquires a scan image obtained by scanning the print document by the scan unit 103. Next, the scan image processing unit 122 performs image processing on the acquired scan image, and divides the image area and the text area (S502).

  The sound generation unit 123 generates sound data for each of the areas divided in subsequent S503 to S510.

  If the processing target of the scan image processing unit 122 is an image region in S503 (YES in S503), the watermark information extraction unit 124 extracts watermark information from the target image (S504). If the extracted information is an alternative character string (YES in S506), the voice generation unit 123 generates voice data that reads the extracted alternative character string (S507). If the watermark information cannot be extracted in S506, or if the extracted watermark information is not a substitute character string, voice data of a predetermined message is generated in S508. The predetermined message preferably has a content for notifying that there is an image such as “It is an image”.

  In S503, when the processing target of the scan image processing unit 122 is a text region (NO in S503), the scan image processing unit 122 performs character recognition on the target region of the scan image (S505). Thereafter, the voice generation unit 123 generates voice data of the recognized character string (S509).

  The above-described processing of S503 to S509 is performed for all regions. When the process is completed for all regions (YES in S510), the audio data generated by the audio generation unit 123 is output from the audio output unit 104, and the process ends.

  In the above embodiment, the configuration in which the electronic document processing unit 110 and the print document processing unit 120 are included in one information processing apparatus has been described. However, the present invention can also be applied to a case where the electronic document processing unit 110 and the print document processing unit 120 are configured to be distributed to different information processing apparatuses.

  In addition, when the voice generation unit 123 generates the voice of the alternative character string in S507 of FIG. 5, if the voice generation unit 123 simply generates the voice reading the alternative character string, the listening side is different from the other text portions. May be difficult to understand. Therefore, the voice generation unit 123 may add a message notifying that there is an image, such as “There is an image of XX” (XX is an alternative character string).

  Further, in S411 of FIG. 4 and S511 of FIG. 5, it has been described that the printing and the voice output are performed after the processing of all the documents is completed. .

  As described above, according to the information processing apparatus of the present embodiment, an alternative character string of an image described in an original electronic document can be held through the process of printing and scanning the electronic document. Therefore, when a visually handicapped person scans a printed matter of an electronic document and confirms the contents by voice, the information of the substitute character string of the image is not lost, so information equivalent to the information obtained from the original electronic document The convenience can be improved. Furthermore, since it is not necessary to print the substitute character string directly, there is an effect that the same document layout can be maintained between the display of the electronic document and the printed matter.

<Embodiment 2>
In the first embodiment described above, the case where print data is generated while analyzing an electronic document acquired by the electronic document acquisition unit 111 has been described. Instead, the contents of the electronic document may be displayed on the display unit 101 according to the same processing, and the contents displayed on the display unit 101 may be printed collectively. The operation of the information processing apparatus in this case will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG.

(Explanation of watermark embedding flow)
First, in step S601, the electronic document acquisition unit 111 acquires an electronic document. Next, in the processing of S602 to S611, the document structure analysis unit 112 analyzes the acquired electronic document to acquire the structure of the electronic document, and the document display control unit 114 displays the electronic document based on the analysis result. Generate display data. Similar to the first embodiment, analysis processing is performed for each predetermined processing unit with respect to the description of the acquired electronic document.

  In S602, when the processing target is a description for displaying an image (YES in S602), the electronic document acquisition unit 111 acquires the described image data (S603). The acquired image data is temporarily held in the information processing apparatus 100. If an alternative character string corresponding to the image is described (YES in S605), the alternative character string extraction unit 113 extracts the alternative character string (S606). In step S <b> 607, the watermark information embedding unit 116 embeds the extracted substitute character string in the corresponding image data as a digital watermark. In subsequent S608, the document display control unit 114 generates display data of the image data in which the digital watermark is embedded in S607 (S608).

  In S602, when the description to be processed is other than an image (NO in S602), in S604, the document structure analysis unit 112 appropriately processes document analysis in accordance with the electronic document description in the same manner as general HTML document analysis. (S604). The document display control unit 114 generates display data based on the analysis result of S604 (S610).

  If there is no description designating an alternative character string corresponding to the image in S605 (NO in S605), the document display control unit 114 generates display data for the image data acquired in S603 in S609.

  When all the processes are completed for the electronic document acquired in S601 (YES in S611), the document display control unit 114 transfers the generated display data to the display unit 101 for display. In step S613, the document print control unit 115 generates print data based on the display content of the display unit 101. In step S614, the print unit 102 performs printing, and the process ends.

  As described above, according to the information processing apparatus of the second embodiment, even when a screen shot of a screen or a window is printed, the information can be printed without losing information on an alternative character string of the image, and convenience is improved.

<Embodiment 3>
In the first embodiment and the second embodiment described above, the case where an alternative character string is embedded as an electronic watermark in an image has been described. However, when the image used in the electronic document is small and the amount of information that can be embedded as a digital watermark is small, or when the amount of information of the alternative character string is large, the alternative character string may not be embedded in the image. In order to cope with such a situation, the third embodiment adopts a configuration in which the information of the alternative character string is embedded in the entire document. The information processing apparatus according to the present embodiment can be realized with the same configuration as the information processing apparatus 100 according to the first and second embodiments. Hereinafter, the operation of the information processing apparatus according to the present embodiment will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG.

(Explanation of watermark embedding flow)
First, in step S701, the electronic document acquisition unit 111 acquires an electronic document. Next, in the processing of S702 to S712, the document structure analysis unit 112 analyzes the acquired electronic document by the document structure analysis unit 112 to acquire the structure of the electronic document, and the document print control unit 115 performs electronic processing based on the analysis result. Print data for printing a document is generated. If the processing target is a description for displaying an image as shown in 201 of FIG. 2 in S702 (YES in S702), the electronic document acquisition unit 111 acquires the described image data (S703). If an alternative character string corresponding to the image is described (YES in S705), the alternative character string extraction unit 113 extracts the alternative character string (S706), and the correspondence between the image and the alternative character string is stored in the information processing apparatus. Store (S707). As the correspondence between the image and the alternative character string, unique identification information is given to the image, and the correspondence between the identification information and the alternative character string is stored. As the identification information, for example, a number given in the order obtained during analysis of the electronic document, an image file name, and the like can be considered. In step S <b> 708, the watermark information embedding unit 116 embeds identification information unique to the image as a digital watermark. In subsequent S709, the document print control unit 115 generates print data of the image data in which the digital watermark is embedded in S708.

  If the description of the processing target is other than an image in S702 (NO in S702), in S704, the document structure analysis unit 112 appropriately processes the analysis of the document in the same manner as a general HTML document analysis according to the description of the electronic document. To do. The document print control unit 115 generates print data based on the analysis result of S704 (S711).

  If there is no description designating the substitute character string corresponding to the image in S705 (NO in S705), the document print control unit 115 generates print data for the image data acquired in S703 (S710).

  When all the processes are completed for the electronic document acquired in S701 (YES in S712), the watermark information embedding unit 116 embeds the correspondence between the stored image and the alternative character string as a digital watermark. Thereafter, the document printing control unit 115 generates document printing data (S713), transfers the printing data to the printing unit 102, performs printing (S714), and ends the process.

(Extraction of alternative character string / voice output)
Next, an operation of scanning a document in which an alternative character string is embedded in the entire document and notifying the contents by voice will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG.

  In step S <b> 801, the scan image acquisition unit 121 acquires a scan image obtained by the scan unit 103 scanning a print document.

  In step S802, the watermark information extraction unit 124 extracts watermark information embedded in the document. If the extracted watermark information includes the correspondence between the image identification information and the alternative character string (YES in S803), this is stored (S804). If the watermark information cannot be extracted in S803, or if the extracted watermark information does not include the correspondence between the identification information and the alternative character string (NO in S803), the process proceeds to S805.

  In step S805, the scan image processing unit 122 performs image processing on the acquired scan image, and divides the image area and the text area.

  In subsequent S806 to S813, the voice generation unit 123 generates voice data for each divided area.

  In S806, when the processing target of the scanned image processing unit 122 is an image region (YES in S806), the watermark information extracting unit 124 extracts watermark information from the target image (S807). If the extracted information is image identification information (YES in S809), the voice generation unit 123 generates voice data of an alternative character string corresponding to the extracted identification information according to the stored correspondence (S810). ).

  If the watermark information cannot be extracted in S809, or if the extracted watermark information is not the image identification information, voice data of a predetermined message notifying that there is an image is generated in S811.

  In S806, when the processing target of the scan image processing unit 122 is a text region (NO in S806), the scan image processing unit 122 performs character recognition on the target region of the scan image (S808). Thereafter, voice data of the character string recognized by the voice generation unit 123 is generated (S812).

  The scan image processing described in steps S806 to S812 is performed for all regions. When the process is completed for all the regions (YES in S813), the sound data generated by the sound generation unit 123 is output from the sound output unit 104, and the process ends.

  As described above, the information processing apparatus according to the third embodiment can embed information on an alternative character string as a digital watermark in a document instead of an image. Compared to the case of embedding in an image, it is possible to embed an alternative character string effectively when the image size is small or the information amount of the alternative character string to be embedded is large.

  In addition, the operation described with reference to the flowchart of FIG. 8 makes it possible to scan and notify a document by voice even when information on an alternative character string is embedded in the document.

<Embodiment 4>
In the first to third embodiments, the watermark information embedding unit 116 performs the process of embedding the substitute character string extracted by the substitute character string extracting unit 113 in the image. However, the present invention is not limited to this, and other information attached to the image such as the file name of the image and the size of the image may be embedded together based on the analysis result of the document structure analysis unit 112.

  Further, when embedding the substitute character string, instead of embedding the substitute character string extracted when reading the substitute character string as it is, another information equivalent to the substitute character string may be embedded. Hereinafter, an example of equivalent information of an alternative character string will be described.

(1) Shin-Yokohama → Shin-Yokohama (2) Shin-Yokohama → Shin-Yokohama (3) Shin-Yokohama → / SH, I, X, Y, O, K, O, H, A, M, A /

  (1) is an example in which an alternative character string written in Roman letters is converted into a kana character string. Although katakana notation is used here, hiragana notation may be used. (2) is an example converted to Kanji notation. (3) is an example of conversion into information acceptable by the voice generation unit 123, and is an example of conversion into a symbol string representing a sound. At this time, information to which control information necessary for generating sound such as accent information is further added may be used. In the above example, conversion from Roman alphabet to kana, kanji, and sound symbol was explained, but conversely, if the original substitute character string is kana or kanji, the information converted to Roman alphabet is used. It may be used.

  In addition, when the watermark information embedding unit 116 embeds the information on the alternative character string, if all the information on the alternative character string cannot be embedded due to restrictions on the size of the image, the compressed information may be embedded. An example of compressing information will be described below.

(1) Partial omission of substitution character string
Depending on the amount of information that can embed "Access Map Shin-Yokohama" as in "Access Map", a part of the substitute character string is omitted. You can embed only the words that can be embedded from the beginning as shown in this example, or use a language processing technology that summarizes the document or extracts the important words, and only the summary text of the alternative character string or the important words May be embedded.

(2) Convert to another expression format with a small amount of information. For example, when “Shin-Yokohama” is extracted as “Shin-Yokohama” and is read out later in speech, another expression that makes the reading content equivalent. Convert to format. In this example, the amount of information to be embedded is compressed by converting 13 Roman characters into 6 katakana characters.

<Other embodiments>
As mentioned above, although embodiment of this invention was explained in full detail, this invention may be applied to the system comprised from several apparatuses, and may be applied to the apparatus which consists of one apparatus.

  In the present invention, a program for realizing each function of the above-described embodiments is supplied directly or remotely to a system or apparatus, and a computer included in the system or apparatus reads and executes the supplied program code. Can also be achieved.

  Accordingly, since the functions and processes of the present invention are implemented by a computer, the program code itself installed in the computer also implements the present invention. That is, the computer program itself for realizing the functions and processes is also one aspect of the present invention.

  In this case, the program may be in any form as long as it has a program function, such as an object code, a program executed by an interpreter, or script data supplied to the OS.

  Examples of the computer-readable recording medium for supplying the program include a flexible disk, a hard disk, an optical disk, a magneto-optical disk, an MO, a CD-ROM, a CD-R, and a CD-RW. Examples of the recording medium include a magnetic tape, a non-volatile memory card, a ROM, a DVD (DVD-ROM, DVD-R), and the like.

  The program may be downloaded from a homepage on the Internet using a browser on a client computer. That is, the computer program itself of the present invention or a compressed file including an automatic installation function may be downloaded from a home page to a recording medium such as a hard disk. Further, it is also possible to divide the program code constituting the program of the present invention into a plurality of files and download each file from a different home page. That is, a WWW server that allows a plurality of users to download a program file for realizing the functions and processing of the present invention on a computer may be a constituent requirement of the present invention.

  The program of the present invention may be encrypted and stored in a computer-readable storage medium such as a computer-readable CD-ROM and distributed to users. In this case, only the user who cleared the predetermined condition is allowed to download the key information to be decrypted from the homepage via the Internet, decrypt the program encrypted with the key information, execute it, and install the program on the computer May be.

  Further, the functions of the above-described embodiments may be realized by the computer executing the read program. Note that an OS or the like running on the computer may perform part or all of the actual processing based on the instructions of the program. Of course, also in this case, the functions of the above-described embodiments can be realized.

  Furthermore, the program read from the recording medium may be written in a memory provided in a function expansion board inserted into the computer or a function expansion unit connected to the computer. Based on the instructions of the program, a CPU or the like provided in the function expansion board or function expansion unit may perform part or all of the actual processing. In this way, the functions of the above-described embodiments may be realized.

It is a figure which shows the function structure of the information processing apparatus in Embodiment 1 of this invention. It is a figure which shows an example of the electronic document described by HTML which concerns on Embodiment 1 of this invention. It is a figure which shows an example of the display or printing result of the electronic document described by HTML which concerns on Embodiment 1 of this invention. It is a flowchart explaining the operation | movement which processes the electronic document in the information processing apparatus of Embodiment 1 of this invention. 6 is a flowchart illustrating an operation for processing a print document in the information processing apparatus according to the first embodiment of the present invention. It is a flowchart explaining the operation | movement which processes the electronic document in the information processing apparatus of Embodiment 2 of this invention. It is a flowchart explaining the operation | movement which processes the electronic document in the information processing apparatus of Embodiment 3 of this invention. It is a flowchart explaining the operation | movement which processes the print document in the information processing apparatus of Embodiment 3 of this invention.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 100 Information processing apparatus 101 Display part 102 Printing part 103 Scan part 104 Audio | voice output part 110 Electronic document processing part 111 Electronic document acquisition part 112 Document structure analysis part 113 Alternative character string extraction part 114 Document display control part 115 Document printing control part 116 Watermark Information embedding unit 120 Print document processing unit 121 Scan image acquisition unit 122 Scan image processing unit 123 Audio generation unit 124 Watermark information extraction unit 191 Electronic document 192 Print document

Claims (14)

An analysis means for analyzing the structured document;
An acquisition means for acquiring the image data when the analysis means detects a link to the image data;
An embedding unit that embeds the character string as a digital watermark in the image data acquired by the acquiring unit when the analyzing unit detects a character string describing the image data;
An information processing apparatus comprising:   The information processing apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising: a print control unit that generates print data for the image data in which the character string is embedded by the embedding unit.   The information processing apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising display control means for generating display data of image data in which the character string is embedded by the embedding means.   The information processing apparatus according to claim 3, further comprising: a print control unit that generates print data based on display contents generated by the display data generated by the display control unit.   The information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the structured document is a document described in HTML.   6. The information processing apparatus according to claim 5, wherein the analysis unit detects the character string from a description of an alt attribute of the document described in the HTML.   The embedding unit converts the notation of the character string detected by the analyzing unit into any one of katakana, kanji, romaji, and a character string representing sound, and converts the converted character string into the image data as a digital watermark. The information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the information processing apparatus is embedded.   The embedding unit compresses the information amount of the character string detected by the analyzing unit according to the size of the image data acquired by the acquiring unit, and embeds the compressed character string in the image data as a digital watermark. The information processing apparatus according to claim 1. Reading means for reading a print document of the print data generated by the information processing apparatus according to claim 2,
Extraction means for extracting a character string embedded as a digital watermark from a reading result by the reading means;
An information processing apparatus comprising:   The information processing apparatus according to claim 9, further comprising a voice generation unit that generates voice data based on the character string extracted by the extraction unit.   The information processing apparatus according to claim 10, wherein if the extraction unit cannot extract the character string, voice data is generated to notify that an image is included in a reading result by the reading unit. An analysis process in which the analysis means analyzes the structured document;
When a link to image data is detected in the analysis step, an acquisition step in which an acquisition unit acquires the image data;
When a character string describing the image data is detected in the analyzing step, an embedding unit embeds the character string as an electronic watermark in the image data acquired by the acquiring unit;
An information processing method characterized by comprising:   A program for causing a computer to function as the information processing apparatus according to any one of claims 1 to 11.   A computer-readable storage medium storing the program according to claim 13.

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