A free and open-source tool that reads movie subtitles aloud

摘要

We present a simple tool that enables the computer to read subtitles of movies and TV shows aloud. The tool extracts information from subtitle files, which can be freely downloaded from the Internet, and reads the text aloud through a speech synthesizer. There are three versions of the tool, one for Windows and Linux, another for Mac OS X, and the third is a browser-based HTML5 prototype. The tools are freely available and open-source. The target audience is people who have trouble reading subtitles while watching a movie, including elderly, people with visual impairments, people with reading difficulties and people who wants to learn a second language. The application is currently being evaluated together with user from these groups.