Fw: Recruiting Now for Survey on Synthesized Speech and Audio Description

From: Robert Jaquiss (rjaquiss@earthlink.net)
Date: Sun Feb 21 2010 - 10:10:29 PST


Recruiting Now for Survey on Synthesized Speech and Audio DescriptionHello Colleagues:

     I thought this might be of interest.

Regards,

Robert

----- Original Message -----
From: Mary Watkins
To: MAG_News@mail4.wgbh.org
Sent: Friday, February 19, 2010 12:47 PM
Subject: Recruiting Now for Survey on Synthesized Speech and Audio Description

Hello. Please see the announcement below inviting people who are blind or have low vision to participate in an upcoming online survey.

Next week, we will be posting information on a separate online survey, under a separate research project, inviting people who are deaf, hard of hearing or late deafened for feedback on real time caption quality. So if this announcement doesn't pertain to you, look out for that one next week.

Please feel free to forward this posting as you see fit to friends, colleagues and other lists. Thanks!

February 19, 2010

Recruiting Now for a Survey on Synthesized Speech and Audio Description

IBM Research-Japan and WGBH's Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) are conducting a joint study via an online survey on the applicability of speech synthesis for audio description of Web-based video.

Adults (18+ years of age) who are blind or have low vision will be asked to share their opinions about a few short video clips which include synthesized description.

NCAM is seeking participants with a range of familiarity with synthesized speech (from little or none to regular users) and as well as familiarity with audio description (from little or none to regular users).

Interested in sharing your opinion? Please send an email to access@wgbh.org with "participate" in the subject line. Once the online survey is posted on or about March 1, you will be sent an email with the survey's Web site address and asked to complete the survey by Friday, March 12. The survey, which will be accessible via screen-reading software, should take no longer than one half hour.

NCAM will summarize and share the results of the survey once user opinions are analyzed.

NOTE: This is an early investigation into a subject many people who are blind or have low-vision have asked about for many years. Though we are conducting this study, WGBH does not intend to substitute synthesized speech for human voices on the programs and movies we currently describe. Following this narrow and limited initial study, further research will be required to expand the scope of investigation into larger populations, other types of media and other parameters.

Thank again,

Mary

-- 
Mary Watkins
Director of Communications 
  and Outreach
Media Access Group at WGBH
One Guest Street
Boston, MA  02135
617 300-3700
mary_watkins@wgbh.org
access.wgbh.org

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