Directory assistance for the visually impaired

Author

Colangelo, R.D. ; Colbert, M.A. ; McKeeman, J.C.

Author_Institution

Bradley Dept. of Electr. Eng., Virginia Polytech. Inst. & State Univ., Blacksburg, VA, USA

fYear

1989

fDate

26-28 Mar 1989

Firstpage

564

Lastpage

566

Abstract

A project in which visually impaired operators were required to provide directory assistance to telephone subscribers is described. Prior to this project, each trained operator accessed a mainframe database containing over 30000 records to find requested information. A system developed around an IBM PS/2, using the OS/2 operating system, allowed operators to avoid the problems of inflexible mainframe interfaces and high maintenance. Output is via the SPO 256 speech synthesiser chip. The system is currently under test

Keywords

IBM computers; handicapped aids; information retrieval systems; microcomputer applications; speech synthesis; telephone systems; IBM PS/2; OS/2; SPO 256 speech synthesiser chip; directory assistance; directory enquiries; microcomputer; operating system; telephone operators; telephone subscribers; visually impaired; Algorithms; Database languages; Hardware; Microcomputers; Microprocessors; Operating systems; Packaging; Spatial databases; Speech synthesis; Visual databases;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

System Theory, 1989. Proceedings., Twenty-First Southeastern Symposium on

Conference_Location

Tallahassee, FL

ISSN

0094-2898

Print_ISBN

0-8186-1933-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/SSST.1989.72531

Filename

72531