Background
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[edit] Project Background
Voice Output Communication Aids (VOCA) are important assistive technologies that help people with communication impairments to speak. VOCA are usually used by people who are non-speaking, speech impaired or deaf. For example, VOCAs can be used to supplement a person’s existing speech or can be used as a person’s main mechanism for speaking.
One of the problems people face when using VOCA, is that they find it difficult to integrate into their daily lives (Kintsch & DePaula 2002). Therefore, the solution we were looking for needed to be easy to setup and use and would not require a lot of extra software. The main reason for a VOCA is to help those people with “severe expressive communication disorders” (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association [ASHA] 1989, p 107) to communicate. Some individuals may never acquire speech, and require a functional communication device that they can be utilised long-term. Thus, the VOCA must be adaptable over time to “grow” with the individual using it. Users must be able to personalize the VOCA and easily integrate it into their lifestyle.
Currently the two primary ways to generate spoken text are either to digitally record someone’s voice and save it as an mp3 (for example) for later playback; or secondly to use a speech synthesizer to ‘speak’ text messages (Ferrera 2005).
The software that generates spoken words can reside on a variety of physical devices. For example, handhelds, desktops, laptops, mobile phones, or specially designed devices to suit individual needs. The aim of our research was to develop software that is easily portable to a variety of hardware devices. After evaluating various software, we decided to investigate the usage of a web-based platform, since that could be ported to the widest variety of physical devices.
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