A Reading Machine Using Bar Coded Allophone Stringing Technique

Abstract-This paper introduces a reading learning aid which is designed to be a low cost consumer product. The design of the machine required the marriage of the recent advancements in both speech and optical technologies. An inexpensive optical wand is used to read bar coded allophone strings from the printed book. Natural sounding speech is then constructed by an 8-bit microcomputer using an LPC synthesizer. The system is self- contained with the flexibility of producing songs, sound effects, and speech. All the speech related data are embodied in the printed material along with games and activities to make the reading learning process fun and rewarding.