AsTeR

An interactive computing system developed by T. V. Raman in his 1994 PhD thesis at Cornell University that converts LaTeX documents into navigable audio documents. AsTeR parses electronic documents into a tree structure that listeners can interactively browse, enabling non-linear access to technical content including complex mathematics. The system uses voice synthesizer parameters like pitch and stereo positioning to convey document structure, and provides cross-reference navigation and bookmarking. AsTeR was a pioneering system in making STEM documents accessible to blind users and influenced the development of modern document accessibility approaches.