10. The method of claim 8 wherein said step of outputting a plurality of identified significant image units comprises producing a speech synthesized output corresponding to said identified significant word image units.
8. A method of excerpting significant information from an undecoded document image without decoding the document image, comprising: segmenting the document image into word image units without decoding the document image; deriving a word shape representation for each of a plurality of said word image units without decoding any characters making up said plurality of word image units, thereby deriving a plurality of said word shape representations; comparing said word shape representations to at least one other word shape representation to identify significant word image units from amongst said word image units; and outputting a plurality of said identified significant word image units for further processing.