WGBH seeks participants for survey on synthesized speech and audio description

[kestrell]

Posted to the DTB mailing list

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 you!

Mary