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Abstract Handwritten document transcription aims to obtain the contents of a document to provide efficient information access to, among other, digitised historical documents. The increasing number of historical documents published by libraries and archives makes this an important task. In this context, the use of image processing and understanding techniques in conjunction with assistive technologies reduces the time and human effort required for obtaining the final perfect transcription. The assistive transcription system proposes a hypothesis, usually derived from a recognition process of the handwritten text image. Then, the professional transcriber feedback can be used to obtain an improved hypothesis and speed-up the final transcription. In this framework, a speech signal corresponding to the dictation of the handwritten text can be used as an additional source of information. This multimodal approach, that combines the image of the handwritten text with the speech of the dictation of its contents, could make better the hypotheses (initial and improved) offered to the transcriber. In this paper we study the feasibility of a multimodal interactive transcription system for an assistive paradigm known as Computer Assisted Transcription of Text Images. Different techniques are tested for obtaining the multimodal combination in this framework. The use of the proposed multimodal approach reveals a significant reduction of transcription effort with some multimodal combination techniques, allowing for a faster transcription process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On August 3, 1492, Christopher Columbus departed from the port of Palos de la Frontera, located in a small cove in southwestern Spain, and returned to this same port on March 15, 1493. On the basis of sedimentology, geochemistry, paleontology and dating of a long core (18 m) collected in this cove, thirteen facies are distinguished in the Neogene-Holocene evolution of its sedimentary infilling, with a transition from Miocene marine environments to Late Holocene marshes, going through an intermediate period that includes fluvial gravels, alluvial sediments and shallow coastal deposits that characterize the maximum of the Fladrian transgression in this area (~6.5 cal kyr BP). These data and others contributed by historical sources allow an approximate reconstruction of this cove at the end of the 15th century. Image 1 • On August 3, 1492, Christopher Columbus departed from a cove in SW Spain. • Its sedimentary record includes the transit from a Miocene shelf to alluvial sediments. • Two geochemical peaks are related to the Flandrian transgression and Roman mining. • In 1492, the progressive filling hindered navigability in this cove. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]