Personification Inc. - Press Releases

Personification to Develop Auditory Search Engine for Users with Reading Impairments

TORONTO, Ontario, Canada - December 7, 1998 - Personification Inc. announced today the development of a search engine for users with visual disabilities and print impairments. The statement coincides with an announcement on December 4 by the Ontario Government to invest $1.9 million in projects that will improve Internet access for Ontarians. The Telecommunications Access Partnerships (TAP) program names Personification as the lead on a project that also involves the University of Toronto and Digital Renaissance.

There are many search engines currently available, but none meet the needs of users with reading difficulties. Screen reader technology enables text-to-speech software to "read out" contents from a web page. However, such technology has difficulty with graphics and advanced layouts common in today's web sites. Search engines present unique challenges for text-to-speech applications. When queried, most search engines return a long list of results. Users must scan this list before selecting one of the hits or trying another search. An often frustrating experience for non-impaired users, this process becomes nearly impossible for impaired users who do not have the ability to scan through a list of thousands of results with standard text-to-speech software.

Personification recognizes that current solutions are falling very short on their promise to deliver search engine functionality to users with impaired reading abilities. Rather than simply converting text to speech, Personification is utilizing its strength in personalization technologies to develop a search engine solution that will deliver useful results for those with reading impairments. "The key," according to Mark Chignell, Vice-President of Research and Development, "is to present users with categorized and summarized search results."

Personification is adapting its proprietary knowledge management technologies in order to produce a search engine that will perform text indexing, categorization, labeling, and summarization. Standard text-to-speech applications will then be used to present the organized results. Within seconds of submitting queries, users will be able to hear a menu of results organized by category. They will then be able to delve deeper and more specifically into subcategories.

TAPS is a private and public sector partnership program initiated by the Government of Ontario to improve access to the Internet. The program, under the direction of the Ministry of Energy, Science, and Technology, is currently in its fourth round of funding. Personification President and CEO John Male is pleased to be working with the TAPS program. "The Internet holds the promise of universal information access for all. Unfortunately, some users are limited by their ability to interact with online resources. We are delighted to apply our personalization technologies to ensure that these users enjoy every benefit of networked information access." In the first phase of development, Personification will apply its search technology to a database of current Ontario news. Future phases will incorporate other types of information.

CORPORATE OVERVIEW:

Personification produces technologies for mobile and personalized information access. The company believes that people should control their information by getting the right content at the right time. The company provides personalized, customized and targeted solutions that will increase your business' overall growth, productivity and effectiveness. Personification delivers and licenses personalization products and consultation services based on a set of core technologies.

For additional information, please contact:
Andy Renieris, Press Relations Liasion
Phone: 416.628.6220
Fax: 416.628.6233
Email: nicole@personification.com

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