Subjective impressions of listening fatigue in students´ learning through synthetic speech
| Reference number | |
| Coordinator | MYNDIGHETEN FÖR TILLGÄNGLIGA MEDIER |
| Funding from Vinnova | SEK 116 000 |
| Project duration | January 2019 - December 2019 |
| Status | Completed |
| Venture | Personal mobility between societal sectors |
Purpose and goal
The aim of the project was to use empirical methods for seeking knowledge about university students’ subjective impression of listening fatigue when listening to university text books with synthetic speech. The project is also a starting point for further, formalized collaboration between the Swedish Agency for Accessible Media and Speech, Music and Hearing, KTH.
Expected results and effects
The studies show that people are capable of describing voice and reading style features in a meaningful way, at least if you are provided with suggestions of features to use. The participants have been quite consistent in their choice of positive and negative features, and we’ve got good knowledge in how voice and reading style for the presentation of long texts should be from a subjective perspective. This is important input to further collaboration projects, where we will develop deep-learned Swedish speech synthesis voices for long and information rich texts.
Planned approach and implementation
Two studies were completed within the project: A web-based questionnaire where questions about preferences of voice or reading style features were asked, or features helping the reader to keep concentration, and a listening test where respondents listened to different voices and made a subjective judgment about how the voices would perform in a study situation, as well as assigning these voices features. A web-based listening test tool was developed according to the WCAG standard for that purpose.