The fundamental research on speech recognition for the visually impaired and its application to voice interaction

1)基于对视障用户的研究，我们开发了两种新型的空调遥控器原型：一种是语音识别型的，另一种是十键键盘的。我们对这些RCS进行了评估测试。在这些研究之后，我们开发了另一个新的RCS作为最后一年的活动；一个是触觉反馈RC，另一个是集成的手机类型RC。2)我们用两种网站测量了视力和盲人用户的任务完成时间：适当标记了标题元素的网站和视觉外观相同但没有标记标题元素的网站。这项实验是用可以导航标题元素的用户代理进行的。结果表明：1)在标示标题元素的情况下，任务完成时间缩短了一半；2)对盲人用户来说，标示对任务完成时间的好处更大；3)适当标记站点后，视力正常用户和盲人用户在反应时间上的总体差异缩小了。3)我们考察了快速发声条件下合成语音的可理解性。四位随机数被用作回忆测试的词汇表。因此，老年人可以在一定程度上回忆起快速语音。但他们的平均回忆率低于青年大学生，且个体差异显著。我们考虑的这项任务的结果受到听觉知觉本身的困难和按正确顺序回忆数字的困难的影响。剔除后一因素的影响，结果表明，老年人的任务绩效与青年学生的任务绩效基本相同。在这两种情况下，老年人的学习效果都不显著，尽管年轻学生的学习效果在几周内显著。

1) Based on the user studies for visually impaired, we developed two new prototypes of remote control for air-conditioner; one was the voice recognition type and the other was the ten-key keyboard. We conducted the evaluation tests for these RCs. After these studies, we developed yet another new RCs as the final year activities; one was the haptic feedback RC and the other was the integrated cellular-phone type RC. We should extend our RC to other home appliances in the future.2) Task completion times of sighted and blind users were measured with two kinds of Web sites: sites marked up appropriately with heading elements and sites with the same visual appearance but with no heading elements marked up. The experiment was carried out with user agents that could navigate through heading elements. The results showed that i) task completion time was reduced by as much as one half with marked up heading elements, ii) the benefits of markup on task completion time were greater for blind users, and iii) the overall difference in response time between sighted and blind users diminished with sites that were appropriately marked up.3) We investigated the intelligibility of synthesized voices at fast speaking rates. Four-digit random numbers are used as the vocabulary of the recall test. As the result, elderly persons can recall fast speech at some levels. However, their average recall rates are lower than the young university students and the individual differences are significant. The results of this tasks we consider are affected by the difficulty of auditory perception itself and the difficulty of recall the numbers in the correct order. Leaving out the effect of latter factor, it turned out that the task performances of elderly persons and young students are almost same. The learning effects of the elderly persons are not significant in either case, though those of the young students are significant for several weeks.