This paper describes the prototype of a system which enables the spatial positioning of synthesized speech relatively to the listener. Based on the proposed system we developed an application which reads an arbitrary text from a file and enables the use of different synthesized voices with changeable pitch and speaking rate as well as the manipulation of their spatial position .A user study with blind users showed a significant improvement of listening comprehension due to easier separation of spatially distributed speakers.
This paper reports on a user study with normal sighted users in which we compared two different auditory interfaces and the visual interface for desktop computer. The two auditory interfaces were based on the use of spatial sounds and differed in spatial distribution of auditory elements. In the user study we evaluated task completion times and interaction efficiency with all three interfaces. The proposed auditory interfaces proved to be as efficient as the visual interface since all test subjects managed to finish all requested tasks.
COBISS.SI-ID: 7421012
A classical hierarchical menu structure of MS Word application was presented with multiple simultaneous sounds. In the user study with blind and visually impaired users we evaluated the efficiency of various numbers of simultaneous sounds as well as their spatial distribution (horizontal and vertical). The results demonstrated that the use of multiple simultaneous sounds increases the information flow between user and a computer and improves the navigation but decreases the speed of interaction due to very high cognitive workload.
Blind computer users review and edit text with the use of screen reading software. The latter offers no information on the layout and the structure of written text and tables unless it is equipped with Braille keyboard. This paper describes an auditory interface which offers information on text layouts and alignments, table structures and dimensions, etc. by spatial manipulation of synthesized speech. Results of the user study show that such interface can be equally accurate and significantly faster than the classical screen reader with Braille keyboard.
This chapter summarizes the existing technologies and important researches in the field of auditory interfaces for various mobile devices. It describes some basics of human perception of auditory and visual information which reveals the most important limitations of human auditory channel as well as limitations in auditory interface design. A special part of the chapter is dedicated to visually impaired and blind users. It describes various screen readers software packages for mobile devices which are based on the synthesized speech.