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

9-12 Apr 1989

Firstpage

1168

Abstract

The authors describe a text-to-phonetic speech algorithm for IBM Personal System/2 computers which allows visually impaired telephone operators to provide directory assistance to telephone subscribers. Prior to this project, each trained operator accessed a mainframe database containing over 30000 records to locate requested information. The cost of maintaining the mainframe database as well as its inflexible interface led to the development of a user interface based on a text to speech algorithm customized for the IBM PS/2. Effective text-to-phonetic translation is accomplished in real time using the string manipulation abilities of the 80286 microprocessor and address tables

Keywords

handicapped aids; speech synthesis; telephone systems; user interfaces; 80286 microprocessor; IBM PS/2; IBM Personal System/2 computers; address tables; directory assistance; real time; string manipulation; telephone subscribers; text to speech algorithm; text-to-phonetic speech algorithm; text-to-phonetic translation; user interface; visually impaired telephone operators; Costs; Hard disks; High performance computing; Microcomputers; Operating systems; Packaging; Random access memory; Speech synthesis; Synthesizers; Visual databases;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Southeastcon '89. Proceedings. Energy and Information Technologies in the Southeast., IEEE

Conference_Location

Columbia, SC

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/SECON.1989.132607

Filename

132607