We are updating ATbar all the time and working on new features such as the ability for the Text to Speech to read the Arabic dictionary if you want to highlight a definition and have it read back.

We have also found that if you maximise the Mindmeister map presented on this page by selecting the window in the map’s bottom toolbar – it opens a new window in the browser and you can launch ATbar to read the text on the mind map branches, add a tint overlay, use the dictionary etc.

The plan is to develop an automatic checking system to make sure the toolbar is always up and running as well as allowing us to keep individual statistics on each plugin so that we know they are robust over time.   This will help us when we complete quarterly reports.

There is a consensus that Arabic dictionaries,
whether printed or electronic are not user-friendly.
Rather than being tools for learning, they are a
hindrance. Their complexity and their presentations are
not conducive to learning. Consequently, their impact
on vocabulary acquisition, even though not formally
assessed, is highly negative. (Belkhouche et al, 2011)

The authors of the paper go on to say that “the printed Arabic dictionary provides a low quality, a poor presentation, a disorganized structure, and an unscientific approach. A cursory browsing of Arabic dictionaries on the library shelves highlights these deficiencies.“

Nawar and Magnus have completed the work on a new online Arabic dictionary. This has now become part of the standard Arabic ATbar and we would be very grateful if it could be tested as much as possible.

Nawar tells me that “the dictionary database includes data from two modernized Arabic dictionaries (for word look-ups) and one traditional dictionary for root look-ups. More data can be easily added in. The dictionary plugin does not only use exact match to search for words and roots in the database, but also, it uses a light stemming algorithm to increase the reliability of the search. Prefixes and suffixes and the definite articles are removed if exact matching does not return results. The order in which these prefixes and suffixes are removed is not random but based on knowledge in the language and has been tested before for applications in information retrieval.”

The method used by Nawar was based on a paper written by Halabi et al (2010) on “A Hybrid Approach for Indexing and Retrieval of Archaeological Textual Information”

The suggested hybrid retrieval approach employs various clustering and
classification methods that enhances both retrieval and presentation, and infers
further information from the results returned by a primary retrieval engine,
which, in turn, uses Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) as a primary retrieval
method. In addition, a stemmer for Arabic words was designed and
implemented to facilitate the indexing process and to enhance the quality of
retrieval.

The dictionary database was then set up by Magnus to link with any words selected on a web page and depending on the choice of a root or the word for a definition – results are shown in what is hoped to be the most helpful way possible.

We are incredibly grateful to the work of Nawar and his brother as well as Magnus as we feel this is a first in terms of how a dictionary can be presented as an online browser plugin to support those reading Arabic texts.   We are aware more dictionaries can be added and possible improvements can be made,  but we need feedback as to how useful this dictionary is to users.  Please leave comments! 

“Developers throughout the Arab World should be excited- Google’s quiet rollout of Arabic voice recognition continues to create new opportunities for localized apps.

Voice Search, an app which allows users to search by simply using their voices, launched in December but has now expanded to recognize speech in eight dialects, including, as we understand it, Jordanian, Kuwaiti, Lebanese, Qatari, Saudi, Emirati, Egyptian, and Palestinian Arabic.

“I’ve never been this excited about a product in my life,” says MENA Product Marketing Manager Najeeb Jarrar, who was on the in-house team that worked for over two years to hone the app.

Google not only tackled a different algorithmic issue, from an engineering and linguistic perspective, he notes, but also built a product that will open up new ways of searching on the web and new opportunities for developers.

Here’s how it works: when you click the search button, your mobile device records your speech as a sound wave, and transfers it to a Google server, where it is compared to billions of sound waves to determine its meaning. Your sentence is then parsed by keywords and compared to billions of keyword combinations. Google uses the best keyword combination to return the results to your phone, all in under a second, depending on your internet connection.

“It’s as accurate as if you tried voice search in English,” says Jarrar. Voice Search also works in Google Maps to return place results.

To maximize its accuracy, the team worked hard to make the app robust, testing it while having local native speakers read popular queries in a train station, in a public cafe, or near echoes, so that it could detect speech patterns despite machine or human noise.

The app, which runs on Android and a feature in the Google Search app for iPhone and Blackberry, will also continue to get more accurate as its learns. If it doesn’t understand the user fully, Voice Search will offer a list of suggestions based on the closest matches, which the user can choose from, thus helping to improve future results.

Most importantly for entrepreneurs, Voice Search in Arabic will open up  to localize apps, make programs simpler to use, and increase accessibility for less tech literate populations. Because Arabic voice recognition is included in the Google Voice Search API, developers can just load the API and select the dialect of their choice.

Some of the ideas that I saw recently pitched at Startup Weekend Amman and QITCOM could certainly benefit. “Maybe we’ll start seeing games where [people] are playing simply by speaking,” offers Jarrar.

Especially where those games or apps are educational- it would be great to see this space use Arabic Voice Search to expand flexibility when it comes to including different types of learners.

Demo below [Arabic]. The Google Voice application for iPhone is available in the iTunes Store and for Android as part of Google Play.

–
Nina is the Editor-in-Chief at Wamda. You can reach her through Wamda, on Twitter @9aa, on Facebook, Google+ or at nina [AT] wamda.com.

We downloaded the language pack and changed the keyboard and all seemed well but it appears from the email I received from their product advisor that there is no Window Arabic voice at present.

“I researched the question to see if Windows 8 supports Arabic (namely Qatari dialect) text to speech. Unfortunately, at this time, Windows 8 does not support it. Only certain languages are included in the built in software.”

So back to the drawing board for the ATbar desktop option – Narrator is not going to speak in Arabic unless someone has found an Arabic Windows system with a well hidden free voice from Microsoft!   If anyone has found a solution to this problem please do let us know!

eSpeak logo

More research and thanks to a recent development with Arabic eSpeak we now have a free voice,  Testing has shown that the voice needs to be improved but with work on the phonetics in the future this is something that could be done.  The aim is to ship NVDA with the ATbar desktop version and the Arabic eSpeak voice.  It will not really be an acceptable voice where a Nuance or Acapela option is available.

The Windows 8 mobile OS has the potential to support more Arabic options and offers translation from OCR although the actual text is still not 100% correct – Spot the problem!

Nuance has a choice of Arabic voices  for mobile and has added speech recognition but none of our team have been able to test its success rates.  Google has also rolled out speech recognition in Arabic for Android phones 

We have been testing online speech recognition systems offered by Google Chrome and they really are not very successful in the Arabic dialects offered.  Below is an example of Speech Recognizer in Arabic.

The TalkTyper system uses Speech Recognizer for speech recognition as well as text to speech – the latter uses a very good voice in Arabic – we are still exploring which voice is used but it sounds like Nuance Maged in Arabic.

What this spot for updates next week linked to the ATbar desktop app and ATbar TTS.

Arabic wiktionary homepage

In a previous blog we showed a diagram that highlighted the importance of organising the stems related to words along with the definitions taken from Wiktionary. The way the words are presented with their changing meanings is important and Maraim and Nawar have been discussing the use of crowd sourcing to achieve a successful outcome as this is not something that can be done immediately if we want to make a useful dictionary that makes the most of open source software alongside content that is also open and accessible to all.

Maraim has written a blog about the subject in Arabic.  She explains the concept of crowd sourcing and provides examples of three different dictionaries – Lingoz, Wordia and Collins that have all used this technique to gather data.

Ayaspell is a project aimed at producing an Arabic word list mainly for spell-checking purposes. The creators of Ayaspell also provide a Hunspell based spell checker equipped with their word list. The main issue with their work is that they used traditional Arabic dictionaries as their word source which contain Arabic words that are no longer used. This would confuse the spell checker and decrease the diffusion talked about above in this post. This is the only documented word list we have found and we did a brief test on the Hunspell implementation which did not show good results.

Hence to improve our spell-checker we should:

1- Make sure popular words are added to our word list (the ability to do that exists).
2- Hunspell and ASpell use Phonetic codes to represent words as they sound spoken. This helps in giving suggestions that not just have close spelling but also close pronunciation. For Arabic it is completely different, Arabic words sound as written (With some exceptions like confusing ة with ه, or ي with ى, or ى with ا, or أ with ا), hence, spelling errors happen accidentally (Button Proximity). But still the phonetic code should be utilized in Arabic but new methods should be added to accurately calculate the distance between words (like Adding Grammar-checking).

We had a problem with Wiktionary’s service API. Wiktionary, when asked for a word definition, conducts an exact-match search on Arabic words, so, if the submitted word has prefixs or suffixes or a definitive article, the word would not be found. To solve this we are creating a light stemmer that operates as preprocessor before the word is looked-up in the dictionary. The light stemmer has a smll CPU footprint because it does not use a word list (only Grammer rules), unlike heavy stemmers which use word list to increase accuracy but decrease performance.

Arabic voice choices

We have been experimenting with voices on the ATbar as there has been some discussion about using a male voice as this may be more acceptable to some users.  We really would value your input into these thoughts.  The English version of the toolbar now has Lucy (F) and Peter (M) and the Arabic voices are now Leila (F) and Mehdi (M).  This additional service comes thanks to Insipio and the work Lars and Magnus carried out over the last few weeks.

The return of the text to speech from the server has been reduced from 4 to 2 seconds – we will monitor whether this has an other unforeseen consequences.

Magnus has also add another plugin as standard to the Arabic and English toolbars.  A colour overlay plugin that will allow users to read websites with less glare. There is a choice of colours – cream, pink, pale blue and pale green.  We hope this will help those who have visual stress, find the glare of black on white hard to read as well as those with other specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia.  If you are using Chrome, Safari and FireFox browsers you will also be able to click through the overlay and even write with most forms.  Sadly Opera and Internet Explorer do not support a click through ability. There is a step by step guide on the ATbar wiki in English and Arabic.

 Looking to the coming months

Arabic Dictionary

Nawar has been working on a new dictionary that will offer users a word list that is more useful for Arabic speakers – it will be based on prefixes and suffixes with root words that may then link with Arabic Wiktionary if it exists and he is hoping to adapt the way the results are presented. It is hoped this will be finished by the end of March 2013

CSS issues

Magnus is working on the CSS issues that occur with some Arabic websites – we have recently been running evaluations on a series of important sites to see how prevalent the problem actually is with the poor presentation of our dialog boxes.  I will be blogging about the particular issues and we will be illustrating the results of the changes as they happen.   It is possible to change the dialog box for individual sites as has been done in the past but this is not the answer as sites constantly change so we need to find a robust solution that works for all.  This will be finished by the end of January.

TTS free voices

TTS work has been on-going and Nawar has tried the Euler/Mbrola route which despite much experimentation has not been successful so far.  eSpeak experiments are ongoing for the desktop version and it is hoped that we can still find a solution for both desktop and  web based toolbar TTS functions by the end of March 2013.

Meetings with Mesar at ATSummit resulted in a discussion about NVDA being used for text to speech as well as a screen reader – in other words developing a way for the program to respond to selected text that has been visually highlighted as well as offer more options to reduce the verbosity for dyslexic users.

Arabic ATbar Desktop version (Windows Xp, 7)

We want to have a free TTS  for the Windows system desktop ATbar when we link it to NVDA as at present the desktop version links to Narrator which does not read in all applications but offers good selected text to speech and screen reading feedback in Wordpad, Notepad, Internet Explorer and works with all individual letters typed as well as for all actions on the Windows desktop and with system operations -the help file has useful keyboard shortcuts.

The ATbar desktop version once installed launches at start up and has menu buttons for text to speech, coloured overlays, an onscreen keyboard and magnification as mentioned in our previous news update.

There is an ATbar desktop download available    There is now a portable version of the desktop ATbar that can be used on USB pendrives – the lower menu button on ATbar website.  The work on the desktop version has been completed and is awaiting any comments from users.

When spell checking is complete, the user is asked if they would like to submit anonymous usage data. This data is displayed to ensure they know what the are submitting.

The spell checking service has been updated and analysed by Nawar and one of the conclusions is that the error checking for long single words is relatively accurate without context.  However, with words that are small and typed incorrectly there are two problems.   One is that the word can be changed to another word that is not appropriate for the context but the spelling is correctly so the mistake is not picked up.  The second problem is that if one small error has been made in a short word there are often too many options as to how this word could be spelt.  The spell checker does not cope with grammatical errors and is unable to see the context of words.

Magnus has found that because the spell checker does not ‘use’ any words around the error he is having to develop a system that will record the words typed prior to the error and then capture a few words after the error.   This is not as easy as it sounds!  The service for correcting errors is in place without the sentences at present

 Server Side Support

All aspects of the websites and toolbar that have required the move to ‘https’ have occurred.  This may not appear to be important to users but it has been done to allow the ATbar and its services to be used on any secure sites such as banking services etc.  The ‘https’ is a way of telling people that you are a trusted source – Magnus has obtained SSL certificates for the majority of our services – these will expire in 2015.  The ATbar and its services now sit on a new virtual server.  We are still looking to the possibility of having a redundant server if the one we are using fails, but this is a costly exercise.

As part of this process all versions of ATbar are now automatically updated. 

For the latest version of ATbar please find it here: https://core.atbar.org/atbar/en/latest/atbar.min.js

Documentation

Documentation is available on a wiki and on Github

Instructions are available in Arabic and English

Dictionary

We have looked into possible alternative dictionaries instead of using Wiktionary.  Wiktionary has a very limited word list and poor definitions when used in Arabic. Of the freely available dictionaries, Word Reference looked promising as it has a comprehensive English to Arabic translation database which is also a dictionary. It has an API but sadly no Arabic > Arabic with definitions or even stems.

One of the problems we face is that true Arabic dictionaries are structured in a different way to western ones. Many of the dictionaries we have looked at include some stem information but lack the more comprehensive information required to help users (example).

We need to understand the use of the dictionary required on ATbar in order to be able to provide the correct service.  So any comments would be very welcome. 

Desktop ATbar

We have developed a Desktop ATbar with magnification, screen reading, colour overlay with screen ruler and an on-screen keyboard. It is still in the beta version and we are in the process of improving its accessibility such as tab order and icon improvements. It is hoped a final release will be available next week. The toolbar has been tested on Windows 7/8 and should be backward compatible – it has not been developed for the Mac OS.

The code for the toolbar is open source and available for download from GitHub. We have included concise and comprehensive inline-documentation between code segments. Several free open source libraries have been used as part of the project and adjusted to suite our needs.

Now, we are making sure the toolbar is easier to install and there are several issues to consider:

• Anti-Viruses blocking the toolbar.
• Installing newer versions of the bar on-top of old ones.
• Making the bar easy to use with shortcuts while avoiding shortcut collisions.

Please do leave your comments on any items we have discussed.

All good wishes for the New Year.  Till 2013

Nawar Halabi has joined the team to help with our desktop toolbar. We are really grateful to have his expertise in Arabic and desktop programming. He has been developing the Arabic Desktop Toolbar

Arabic Desktop Toolbar

The new Arabic toolbar is an open source windows application built using the C# programming language on top of .NET framework. The main purpose of the toolbar is to provide a launch pad for the Ease of Access options provided by Windows and other accessibility applications to Arab desktop computer users.  We hope to gradually provide the same functions that are available on ATbar (which is for web users).

At present the toolbar is available for beta testing and includes four functions: an onscreen keyboard, a screen reader, a magnifier and colour overlays.  The first two use the Windows built-in onscreen keyboard and Narrator, and the other two are bespoke applications.  The window magnifier and the colour overlays can be adapted to suit the user.   There is the ability to open a preferences window where it is possible to customize  the size and behaviour of the magnifier (lens or docked); change the colour of overlays and change whether the toolbar windows are always on top (see screenshots).

Please help us to improv the toolbar and by downloading the beta version from github

Observations so far:

• A good Arabic screen reader is required to replace windows Narrator. We are looking into the use of NVDA with the Windows Arabic voice.  There appear to be no freely available text to speech voices in Arabic at present.
• Making the toolbar in a way that accepts plugins (similar to the ATbar browser version) to make it easier to add new features.
• The toolbar has been built to be accessible to any input device and could take any language support – at present it is only available in Arabic.   It can be used in High contrast mode and has its own desktop icon.