Towards a Prosodic Model for Synthesized Speech of Mathematical Expressions in MathML

Abstract

The use of the MathML language made possible to improve the accessibility of mathematics for blind or low-vision persons in digital media. Synthetic speech technologies have advanced significantly using MathML, however, the speech synthesizers' standard reading style is still not suitable for mathematics. Making mathematical reading of the speech synthesizers more natural and expressive is still a challenge. The creation of models to produce the appropriate prosody in the synthesized speech of math content is therefore necessary, as shown in previous research. This article presents a proposal for a model to improve prosody in the synthesized speech of mathematical expressions based on MathML. A corpus of mathematical expressions spoken by Mathematics teachers was created to support the model's development. The Fujisaki intonation model was adopted for intonation control, accent and phrase commands have been extracted from the corpus, and some adjustments have been made to manipulate prosodic parameters in the speech of mathematical expression in correlation with the MathML tree; additionally, a pattern of pauses control is being created.