335 R. Jacob et al. (eds.) Computer-Aided Design of User Interfaces IV, 335-348. © 2005 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in Netherlands. Chapter 27 BUILDING RICH USER INTERFACES FOR DIGITAL TALKING BOOKS Luís Carriço, Carlos Duarte, Rui Lopes, Miguel Rodrigues and Nuno Guimarães LaSIGE, Department of Informatics, Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon Abstract: This paper presents a framework for the automatic production of Digital Talking Books (DTB). The production process converts existing audio tapes and OCR-based digitalization of text books into full-featured, multi- synchronized, multimodal digital books. The framework deals with the standardization processes, media enrichment and User Interface definition. The latter is based on abstract, yet DTB specific, pattern-based UI specifications. This allows the definition of various forms of interaction and presentation, required by the diversity and constraints of targets users (e.g. visually impaired persons) and situations of use (e.g. learning). Balancing the focus of production between personalized, situation-based UI and adaptive ones is also considered. The article also summarizes some usability tests on generated DTBs that contributed to the refinement of the framework. Key words: UI generation, model-based tools, accessibility, user diversity 1. INTRODUCTION Audiotapes have served as an important medium, and sometimes the only alternative, for print-disabled reader’s access to books. In several public libraries, in particular in the Portuguese National Library, a long time effort was made in speech recording of a large amount of printed material. However, the limitations of this analogue approach, even when compared