Best viewed on Internet Explorer(Windows), Safari(OS X) or Chrome. Do not use Firefox 8! JAWS users should use IE. Be sure to allow pop-ups (see instructions for help).
To participate in this experiment, you should be legally blind (visual acuity of less than 20/200 with correction or a field of less than 20 degrees), and have been legally blind from a young age (6 years of age or younger). If your visual acuity is greater than 20/200, you might like to try our other study.Intelligibility Evaluation
Our goals are to evaluate methods for assessing the intelligibility of synthetic (i.e., computer-generated) speech and to measure the intelligibility of synthetic speech at different speaking rates. This is not an evaluation of you as a listener.
You will listen to short synthetic sentences. Type what you hear. The sentences are grammatical, but nonsensical. For example: ''Hang the walls and the mad fields.''
Listen carefully! You will hear each sentence only once. Some of the sentences may be difficult to understand and remember. We strongly recommend you listen with headphones or earbuds and in a quiet place.
The first time you start the evaluation, you will be directed to a page where you will be asked to provide some background information, and then to a practice session. In the practice session you will be presented with six example sentences. These sentences are meant to help you get familiar with the task and to help you set the appropriate sound volume. Once you have become familiar with the task, you will be presented with 60 test sentences.
To hear a sentence, push the "Play" button. There will be a three-second delay after you hit the "Play" button to give you time to pause your screen reader. After each sentence, turn your screen reader back on and type the sentence as you heard it into the text window. If you are not sure about a word, type your best guess even if it is not a real word. If you can't guess a word, type xxx for that word. You can edit your response to fix typos and misspellings. When you are finished typing, click the "Continue" button to move to the next sentence.
If you would like to suspend the evaluation and come back later to finish it, simply bookmark the location of the page you are on. You can later go to the bookmarked page to continue the session where you left off. You may suspend the evaluation at any time.
Your participation is expected to take 25 minutes or less. We encourage you to take a break whenever needed.
In order to participate in this study, you should be legally blind (visual acuity of less than 20/200 with correction or a field of less than 20 degrees), and have been legally blind from a young age (6 years of age or younger). If your visual acuity is greater than 20/200, you might like to try our other study.
Screen Reader Instructions
Turn of continuous browsing; in Windows Eyes, use Ctrl-Shift-A. Use tab to move from item to item on the page. Use enter to enter a form item on the page or to press the play button.In Safari, uncheck 'block pop-up windows' in the main Safari menu. In Chrome, when the first page with a play button loads, if you get a pop-up from Quicktime requesting permission to run on the page, give it permission to 'Always' run on the page.
By clicking the ''Start Evaluation'' link, you acknowledge that you have read these instructions and agree to allow your responses to be used for this evaluation.
Click Start Evaluation to begin.