Capti-Record: Improving Reading Fluency in Students with Reading Disabilities

The goal of this SBIR I project is to research, develop, and evaluate the feasibility of the Capti-Record assistive reading technology to help students with reading disabilities to improve their reading fluency. The Capti-Record enables students to listen to any text narrated by text to speech or by their teacher, providing a model for fluent reading. Students can record their own voice-over for that text individually or by roles. Students are able to listen to themselves read and follow along with a text highlighter. Project objectives include: (1) implementing an automatic audio-text alignment algorithm; (2) developing voice-over recording, storage, and playback functionality; (3) creating a user interface for recording/replaying of voice-overs; (4) creating a user interface for analytics; and (5) evaluating the Capti-Record in school settings. Anticipated project outcomes include the Capti-Record aligning audio to text as well as recording, storing, and playing back voice-over audio; the ability for students to record voice-over to any text; and the ability of teachers to access and review students’ voice-overs and analytical data to make targeted instructional decisions resulting in improved literacy for students with reading disabilities. This project is developed with assistance from Education Testing Service and Benetech/Bookshare, as well as consultants from Universities of Buffalo and Memphis.