US 2014/0156266 A1 · SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ENHANCING COMPREHENSION AND READABILITY OF TEXT

Abstract

The present invention is a text display system with speech output that uses a method of text segmentation in which segments of text are presented one after another for reading text sequentially. To indicate the location of text a user is currently reading, the current sentence is emphasized by presenting the surrounding text in faded colors. The current sentence is segmented into phrases where the points of segmentation are chosen by a series of grammatical rules and the desired number of words in each segment. When the text is presented sequentially, each segment is highlighted within the current sentence. With the use of a text-to-speech output system, each segment is spoken out with a pause before the next segment is presented. In a non-linear/selective reading scenario, a user can select a text segment, for which the span of the segment can be automatically generated or manually selected by the user.

Claims21

Dependent claims

A method of parsing a sentence into a sequence of phrasal segments, the method being performed by a computer processor, the method comprising the steps of:

(a) providing a target segment length expressed as a number of words or syllables;
(b) parsing, by the computer processor, the sentence to identify a plurality of candidate break points based on punctuation and parts of speech and including candidate break points at the beginning and end of the sentence;
and
(c) eliminating, by the computer processor, some of the candidate break points, leaving a plurality of final break points, so that every word in the sentence is situated between two final break points, and the sum of the differences between (i) the target segment length and (ii) the number of words, if the target segment length is expressed as a number of words, or the number of syllables, if the target segment length is expressed as a number of syllables, between each consecutive pair of final break points is minimal;
wherein each sequence of words situated between each consecutive pair of final break points is identified as a segment.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

System and method for enhancing comprehension and readability of text

Life of this patent

System and method for enhancing comprehension and readability of text

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims21