Text-To-Speech for individuals with vision loss- a user study.
Abstract
Individuals with vision loss use text-to-speech (TTS) for most
of their interaction with devices, and rely on the quality of syn-
thetic voices to a much larger extent than any other user group.
In total, 33% of local synthesis requests for Google TTS come
from TalkBack, the Android screenreader, making it our top
client and making the visually-impaired users the heaviest con-
sumers of the technology. Despite this, very little attention has
been devoted to optimizing TTS voices for this user group and
the feedback on TTS voices from the blind has been tradition-
ally less-favourable. We present the findings from a TTS user
experience study conducted by Google with visually-impaired
screen reader users. The study comprised 14 focus groups and
evaluated a total of 95 candidate voices with 90 participants
across 3 countries. The study uncovered the distinctitve us-
age patterns of this user group, which point to different TTS
requirements and voice preferences from those of sighted users.
of their interaction with devices, and rely on the quality of syn-
thetic voices to a much larger extent than any other user group.
In total, 33% of local synthesis requests for Google TTS come
from TalkBack, the Android screenreader, making it our top
client and making the visually-impaired users the heaviest con-
sumers of the technology. Despite this, very little attention has
been devoted to optimizing TTS voices for this user group and
the feedback on TTS voices from the blind has been tradition-
ally less-favourable. We present the findings from a TTS user
experience study conducted by Google with visually-impaired
screen reader users. The study comprised 14 focus groups and
evaluated a total of 95 candidate voices with 90 participants
across 3 countries. The study uncovered the distinctitve us-
age patterns of this user group, which point to different TTS
requirements and voice preferences from those of sighted users.
Research Areas
