Interactive Visual Description of a Web Page for Smart Speakers

Smart speakers are becoming ubiquitous for accessing lightweight information using speech. While these devices are powerful for question answering and service operations using voice commands, it is challenging to navigate content of rich formats–including web pages–that are consumed by mainstream computing devices. We conducted a comparative study with 12 participants that suggests and motivates the use of a narrative voice output of a web page as being easier to follow and comprehend than a conventional screen reader. We are developing a tool that automatically narrates web documents based on their visual structures with interactive prompts. We discuss the design challenges for a conversational agent to intelligently select content for a more personalized experience, where we hope to contribute to the CUI workshop and form a discussion for future research.