Kõnetempo eelistused ja audiosüsteem nägemispuudega inimestele
Preferences of speech Rate and an audio system for the Visually impaired

Summary/Abstract: The article describes an audio system of electronic texts and audio books, designed for the visually impaired people to help them read the news, newspapers, magazines and books and listen to audio books over the internet. The audio system enhances access of the visually impaired to necessary information. Simplicity of use enables them, through the internet, to benefit from various electronic texts and the sound library, even if they do not have a daily experience of computer use. in order to select appropriate speech rates perception tests were carried out for the blind and the sighted. The speech rate perception tests did not provide unequivocal answers to all questions posed. although the speech rate preferences of the blind and the sighted displayed certain differences, the size of the difference does not seem to depend so much on the visual impairment than on the subject's experience of using the computer and screen reader. The ability to understand high rate speech may develop after the fifth year of daily use of the computer and of listening to synthesized speech. among our test group of visually impaired people such a capacity was manifested in every fifth blind person. although we did not manage to establish the optimum speech rate suitable for all who took the perception test, we applied, besides the regular rate, two higher speech rates in the audio system: a high rate (30% higher than normal) and a very high rate that was 60% higher than the normal rate.

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