Service platform technology consisting of four core technologies
Create a standardized way to convey content such as formulas, tables, graphs, and pictures.

The Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) announced that it has developed a core source technology that allows the visually impaired to freely listen to general e-books based on EPUB, an international standard technology, through the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism's (MCST) 'Development of E-book Service Platform Technology for Accessibility for the Disabled' project.

This technology is currently being trademarked under the name "SEA Platform" and is in the process of commercialization. The research team is also planning a pilot service for the visually impaired this year, with the support of the National Library for the Disabled.

Until now, the only ways for the visually impaired to access books have been Braille, audio books, and DAISY, a specially designed book for the visually impaired. However, providing content through these methods required separate reprocessing, limiting the annual availability to only 4-10% of new books.

The research team confirmed that although visually impaired people can understand some text information by using the screen reader function on their smartphones that conveys the content on the screen through voice, there is no standardized method for conveying content such as formulas, tables, graphs, and pictures. To solve this problem, the research team created pronunciation rules specialized for Korean to express learning content such as formulas and tables.

Therefore, tables, figures, and formulas in books, which had been considered difficult problems, were made available to visually impaired people through voice.

ETRI explained that this technology consists of four core technologies: converter, author, reader, and service platform technology.

A 'conversion tool' is a technology that converts existing books into standard e-book formats that can be understood by the visually impaired. Additionally, the 'authoring tool' allows e-book creators to create e-books that comply with standard accessibility guidelines from the initial authoring stage.

'Reader' is an e-book viewer that not only provides the functions necessary for non-disabled people to read e-books, but also allows visually impaired people to use the same functions by using touch input and text-to-speech (TTS) output functions to navigate e-books and provide functions such as paused reading or continuous reading.

A 'service platform' is a concept of an e-book providing server that allows users to search for, download, and read e-books.

With this, ETRI announced that it has developed ▲a text reading function through TTS ▲an e-book viewer based on interaction for the disabled ▲an authoring tool and conversion tool that can easily author and convert e-books to support accessibility for the disabled, in order to provide the visually impaired with equal access to information and the right to education.

Ultimately, in order to make it easier for visually impaired people to access books, the entire platform was created by creating a standard protocol based on e-books so that visually impaired people can easily access and listen to them.

ETRI stated that it has currently developed technology to convey middle school-level formulas and tables, but that significant effort is needed to convey more complex and challenging formulas, tables, graphs, and complex diagrams verbally, even in professional textbooks. They also added that it will take time for visually impaired people to adapt to this new technology, moving beyond the methods they have been using.

ETRI's Gil Yeon-hee, the principal researcher responsible for this project, said, "Companies distributing e-books do not have their own reader terminals that can be used by people with disabilities for reading, so people with disabilities are having difficulty reading. “General companies also need to pay more attention to e-book accessibility for the welfare of people with disabilities,” he said.