Making Speech Synthesis More Accessible to Older People.
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Date
2007-08Author
Wolters, Maria
Campbell, Pauline
DePlacido, Christine
Liddell, Amy
Owens, David
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Wolters, M., Campbell, P., DePlacido, C., Liddell, A. & Owens, D. (2007) Making Speech Synthesis More Accessible to Older People., 6th ISCA Workshops on Speech Synthesis(SSW-6), , , ,
Abstract
In this paper, we report on an experiment that tested users'
ability to understand the content of spoken auditory reminders.
Users heard meeting reminders and medication reminders spoken
in both a natural and a synthetic voice. Our results show that
older users can understand synthetic speech as well as younger
users provided that the prompt texts are well-designed, using
familiar words and contextual cues. As soon as unfamiliar and
complex words are introduced, users' hearing affects how well
they can understand the synthetic voice, even if their hearing
would pass common screening tests for speech synthesis experiments.
Although hearing thresholds correlate best with users'
performance, central auditory processing may also influence
performance, especially when complex errors are made.