Research in Developmental Disabilities 35 (2014) 3462–3468
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Research in Developmental Disabilities
Assisting the visually impaired to deal with telephone interview jobs using information and commutation technology Fung-Huei Yeh a,*, Chung-Chieh Yang a,b a b
Department of Mechanical and Electro-Mechanical Engineering, Tamkang University, Tamsui Dist., New Taipei City, Taiwan Chunghwa Telecommunication Laboratories, Yangmei City, Taoyuan County, Taiwan
A R T I C L E I N F O
A B S T R A C T
Article history: Received 22 April 2014 Received in revised form 16 July 2014 Accepted 6 August 2014 Available online 7 September 2014
This study proposed a new information and commutation technology assisted blind telephone interview (ICT-ABTI) system to help visually impaired people to do telephone interview jobs as normal sighted people and create more diverse employment opportunities for them. The study also used an ABAB design to assess the system with seven visually impaired people. As the results, they can accomplish 3070 effective telephone interviews per month independently. The results also show that working performance of the visually impaired can be improved effectively with appropriate design of operation working flow and accessible software. The visually impaired become productive, lucrative, and self-sufficient by using ICT-ABTI system to do telephone interview jobs. The results were also shared through the APEC Digital Opportunity Center platform to help visually impaired in Philippines, Malaysia and China. ß 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Information and commutation technology Visually impaired Text-to-speech Braille Telecommuting Telemarketing
1. Introduction Blind and low vision people are often considered as lacking ability to work because of the defects in visual acuity. A lot of visually impaired people are in the long-term unemployed status, and they are disadvantaged group in employment. The employment rate of them is low, and most of them make a living by massage in Taiwan (Jang, Wang, Lin, & Shih, 2013). This may be caused by the long-term legislation protection of massage jobs for the visually impaired to do only in Taiwan. Although the intention is good to protect the visually impaired people’s right for working, it also encourages them to make a living by massage. After Taiwan’s grand justice constitutional interpretation announced that the massage is no longer the exclusive rights and interests of the visually impaired. The unemployment situation of the visually impaired will become more serious. At mean time, the government also announced ‘‘Taiwan People with Disabilities Rights Protection Amendment Act’’. The new clauses stipulated that if the telephone service of government agencies employed more than 10 people, they should hire more than one visually impaired agent. This is a very good chance to follow government policy and help visually impaired people to do telephone service. There are many kinds of telephone service. Some telephone services are too complex for the visually impaired to do. The authors cooperated with resources center for the blind in Tamkang University to evaluate proper
* Corresponding author at: Department of Mechanical and Electro-Mechanical Engineering, Tamkang University, No. 151, Yingzhuan Rd., Tamsui Dist., New Taipei City 25137, Taiwan. Tel.: +886 2 26215656x2761; fax: +886 2 26209745. E-mail address: [email protected] (F.-H. Yeh). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ridd.2014.08.009 0891-4222/ß 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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telephone services and found that telephone interview or telemarketing jobs are very suitable for visually impaired to do. Not only the information is less than the others but also the operation steps are simpler than other telephone services. So we decided to choose these services as development target and plan to establish an information and communications technology (ICT) assisted telephone interview teleworking system for the visually impaired to undertake customer satisfaction telephone interview, telephone market research, telephone opinion polls, and telephone audience survey jobs. It also offers a new choice for government agencies and enterprises to hire visually impaired people. There are several assistive technologies have been developed for the visually impaired and the disabled. These techniques help them in learning, communicating with other people, getting information, working, and improving quality of life. For example, blind computer with screen reader software (McCarthy, Pal, & Cutrell, 2013), Braille display device (Yeh, Tsay, & Liang, 2005) and computer-aided telephone system with microswitch hardware to assist the disabled (Lancioni, O’Reilly, Singh, & Oliva, 2011; Lancioni, O’Reilly, Singh, Sigafoos, et al., 2011; Lancioni et al., 2013; Perilli et al., 2012, 2013). If we give appropriate assistance to the visually impaired to meet their need, it will be able to shorten the gap with the sighted people. Not only assist them to learn and get information, but also help them to do computer typing, customer service, or other ICT related jobs. There was a project named Towards Handicap Integration Negotiating Knowledge (THINK) supporting physical disabled employment in Europe. It professionally integrated 300 physical disabled people as teleworkers in 5 European countries. In Taiwan, there were also some similar cases and projects which tried to assist physical disabled people working in cell phone repair service. However, these employment opportunities are only available for the disabled with normal vision and do not take care of the visually impaired. In this study, the authors corporate with resources center for the blind in Tamkang University and use ICT assistive technologies to help visually impaired people to do telephone interview jobs. Among the many types of the customer service telecommuting jobs, the authors found that customer satisfaction telephone interview service is very suitable for visually impaired to do. The information of this service is limited. It does not like other customer services which have huge information to read and will cause blind people have trouble to get all information in time. Also, the visually impaired can work at home or remote accessible working environment by assisting with the internet and voice over internet protocol (VoIP) technologies. So we chose customer satisfaction survey telecommuting service as our first target and try to assist blind people to do this kind of jobs with ICT. In order to achieve the goal, several assistive technologies, like text-to-speech technology, Braille display technology, customer service technology, VoIP, and internet technology are integrated in one blind user interface to overcome the issues that visually impaired encountered in this service. The first issue is reading customer’s information. Because the visually impaired people cannot read the information which displayed on the computer screen, including customer’s name, address, service type, and so on. So, an assistive technology of reading customer’s data was used to solve this issue. We can use text-to-speech technology and Braille display technology to assist visually impaired getting information of the customer. The text-to-speech technology can convert the text into speech signal then output to headset. Let visually impaired people can hear the content of the customer’s information displayed on the computer screen. A text-to-speech engine contains text processing, prosody prediction, and synthesizer. First, it converts text to phonetic transcriptions, divides, and marks the text into prosodic units (phrases and sentences). Then the proper prosodic information will be generated according to the nearby phonetic transcriptions context. This part includes the computation of the target prosody (pitch contour and phoneme durations). Finally, the synthesizer uses the output information from text processing and prosody prediction modules to produce the speech signal. The Braille display assistive technology can be used to help visually impaired people to understand the content on the computer screen. It can translate the text information displayed on computer screen to Braille character. A Braille character is made up of six dots positions which arranged in a rectangle containing two columns of three dots each. A Chinese character consists of an initial, a final, and a tone. Each cell of Braille display can express one part. For example, a Chinese character ‘ba’ will be translated to dot ‘one, three, five’ as initial part ‘b’, dot ‘three, four, five’ as final part ‘a’, and dot three as tone in three cells. The Braille character is widely used by visually impaired people to read and write. The second issue is following the questionnaire and filling the answer of each question. The text-to-speech technology and Braille display technology are also used to solve this issue. When visually impaired people realize the content of the questionnaire, they can interview customers about service satisfaction by telephone. A Braille computer input method is also used to assist blind people filling the comment of the questionnaire. They can use ‘F’, ‘D’, ‘S’, ‘J’, ‘K’, ‘L’ keys on the computer keyboard as Braille dot one, two, three, four, five, six to input Chinese characters. For example, the input steps of Chinese character ‘ba’ are described as follows. The first step is pressing ‘F’, ‘S’, ‘K’ on the keyboard at the same time. It will be translated into Chinese initial ‘b’. The second step is pressing ‘S’, ‘J’, ‘K’ on the keyboard at the same time. It will be translated into Chinese final ‘a’. The final step is pressing ‘S’ to choose Chinese tone one to complete the input of this Chinese character. The third issue is making out bound call for visually impaired people. The traditional telephone equipment is not suitable and not easy for them to use. Visually impaired people have to memorize and dial the number themselves, after they read customer’s phone number from speech synthesis or Braille display device. It is very inconvenient for them. If we can assist them to dial from computer directly and communicate with customer by wearing a headset attached to computer sound card, it will enhance the performance of telephone interview greatly. So, a method of integrating VoIP, speech synthesis, and Braille display technologies to help visually impaired control the telephone from computer directly was proposed. It can control the computer telephone integration (CTI) server, make phone call, and hang up phone. It also can transmit speech data between computer headset and customer via VoIP. The speech synthesis and Braille display technologies are also used to prompt the dialing progress and telephone status to assist blind people.
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The goal of this work was to develop a new ICT assisted blind telephone interview (ICT-ABTI) system to increase the working performance of the visually impaired. This system included assistive operation flow design and accessible design based on the operating habits of the visually impaired. An assessment of this system was carried out with seven blind people by an ABAB design. This study is an independent public interest research which is not for commercial. The authors hope to share the experience of this study to encourage the government and enterprises to provide more working opportunities for blind people. The most important thing is to let the visually impaired work accessibly and feel self-reliant by assisting with ICT. 2. Methods 2.1. Participants Seven visually impaired people participated in this study. All of the participants graduated from university. All of the participants had enough experience in using computers (Microsoft windows operation system). The ethnic backgrounds of the participants are one Taiwanese aborigine and six Han Chinese. Participants were divided into mild, moderate, and severe visual impairment under ‘‘the physically and mentally handicapped, classification and qualification standards of Taiwan ministry of health and welfare’’. Participant’s ages ranged from 24 to 39 years of age (mean = 30). The comparisons of the demographic information for the participants are shown as Table 1. Participant one was a 24 year old female with mild degree of visual impairment. Participant two was a 25 year old male with mild degree of visual impairment. Participant three was a 39 year old female with moderate degree of visual impairment. Participant four was a 30 year old female with moderate degree of visual impairment. Participant five was a 28 year old male with severe degree of visual impairment. Participant six was a 37 year old female with severe of visual impairment. Participant seven was a 30 year old male with severe of visual impairment. The names of the participants have been changed to numbers in this study to protect their privacy. In addition to the participants’ willingness to be involved in this research, the legal representatives of the participants had provided formal consent for this research. 2.2. Apparatus and setting The study was carried out in a quiet room and computers were placed on a computer table. During baseline phase (without the use of the ICT-ABTI system), participants used conventional desk telephones, computers and Braille display devices. During intervention phases (with the use of the ICT-ABTI system), participants used headphones, computers and Braille display devices. 2.3. ICT assisted blind telephone interview system architecture In this study, a real case of ICT-ABTI system implementation in Tamkang University will be addressed. Based on integrating the three ICT assisted technologies mentioned above and user interface design from requirement of visually impaired, an ICT assisted blind telephone interview system was developed successfully. The system architecture of ICT-ABTI system is shown in Fig. 1. The system consists of an accessible client for visually impaired, an internet protocol private branch exchange (IP-PBX) platform, and a customer database. All components are modularized for scalability and future extension. The accessible client includes user interface design for the visually impaired. The IP-PBX is also a CTI server. It includes the telephone interface and the computer interface. It also handles call interface, controls telephone function, accepts VoIP data from accessible client and makes outbound call to customer through public switched telephone network (PSTN) or public land mobile network (PLMN) network. The customer database stores contact information of customer and the answers of questionnaire. Each component is connected through local area network (LAN). The voice data is transmitted between accessible client and IP-PBX by VoIP. 2.3.1. Operation flow design Because visually impaired people have inherent limitations, they cannot undertake customer service well without proper assistance. Therefore, the operation flow is designed as simply as possible to avoid complicated steps. First, a visually Table 1 The comparisons of the demographic information for the participants.
Participant Participant Participant Participant Participant Participant Participant
one two three four five six seven
Age
Gender
Level of impairment
Ethnic background
24 25 39 30 28 37 30
Female Male Female Female Male Female Male
Mild degree Mild degree Moderate degree Moderate degree Severe degree Severe degree Severe degree
Han Chinese Han Chinese Han Chinese Han Chinese Han Chinese Taiwanese aborigine Han Chinese
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Fig. 1. System architecture of ICT-ABTI system.
impaired agent uses a computer hot key to load one customer’s data and one questionnaire at the same time. Then they can listen to the synthesized speech and touch the displayed Braille of the content. They can also use a hot key to jump to the first data item of the grouped data, then switch to next data item by tab key, and switch back by shift-tab key. After the visually impaired agent familiarizes the content of customer’s information and questionnaire, they can give an instruction of contacting the customer to the system by a hot key. The system will automatically dial to the customer according the phone number hidden in the system memory. Then the visually impaired agent can interview the customer about the satisfaction of the service by asking question and filling the answer one by one. After the visual impairment agent hangs up the call by using another computer hot key, the system will save both the results of interview filled by the visually impaired and the voice recorded of this call. An experienced agent will draw the recorded voice file, check the quality of the interview, and retrain the visually impaired agent in order to improve the quality later. 2.3.2. Accessible client overview Based on interviews with the visually impaired, we realize that a good user interface design for the visually impaired is very important. It will affect the working performance of them greatly. We used user-centered design (Cheverst et al., 2003) with visually impaired people together. Every operation interface design has been confirmed by the visually impaired. Which includes data item position, data item sequence, data clustering, and hot key assignment. The design also fits the operating habits of the visually impaired and the requirements of them. Besides, the design of all Microsoft windows graphical user interface components are followed Microsoft active accessibility rules. Which includes accessible description, accessible name, and accessible role property. Therefore, the text information of each component on the computer screen can be captured, then pass to the speech synthesis component and Braille display component. The detailed architecture of accessible client is shown in Fig. 2. The accessible client consists of blind telephone control component (BTC), text-to-speech (TTS) component, Braille display processing (BDP) component, blind user interface and hot key control (BUIHKC) component, speech tempo adjustment (STA) component, and phone number automatic selection (PNAS) component. The BTC component is designed to use hot key operating. It also prompts the phone status via speech synthesis and Braille display device. It likes a special softphone for visually impaired people. The functions include dialing phone number, hanging up phone, processing speech data recorded from headset, transmitting the speech data to IP-PBX through VoIP and vice versa. It receives the hot key command from BUIHKC component, provides the telephone functions, and notifies the telephone status. This component also uses earcons (Power & Ju¨rgensen, 2010) to notify the events of telephone call in, call out, hang up, call forwarding, and call time reminder. This will help blind people to increase the working performance.
Fig. 2. The architecture of accessible client.
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The TTS component is designed to convert text data into speech signal and then output to headset. It receives the text information data captured from the computer screen or the BTC component. A visual impairment agent can hear system prompt information, business information, phone status message, and voice data remixed from VoIP during the phone call. This component will automatically detect and adjust the volume of TTS. It will decrease the TTS volume to avoid interference with the interview, when visually impaired agent listens to customer’s voice. This component will also process Chinese article to sentences, phrases, words, phonetic symbols, and output Chinese text processing results to BDP component. The BDP component receives information from TTS component. It will translate phonetic symbols to Braille codes and then output to Braille touch display device. Chinese phonetic symbols include 21 consonants, 16 vowels, 22 compound vowels, and five tones. The Chinese Braille uses six dot positions to represent the Chinese phonetic symbols. A visually impaired agent can understand the content on the computer screen by touching the Braille display device. This component also handles the Chinese Braille input. When the Braille codes are received from keyboard, it will be translated to Chinese syllables. When BUIHKC component receives the hot key commands from visually impaired agent, it will trigger the corresponding actions. The component will transfer the demanded commands to BTC and STA component. It will send the prompt messages to TTS and BDP component. Based on the characteristic of customer data, questionnaire and operating habits of the visually impaired, the data and user interface are grouped to meet the requirement of them. A computer dialog box is designed and split into four areas. It includes customer information area, service information area, questionnaire and survey result area, and function area. Each area is assigned to a hot key for quick operation and has related data items. The order of the items is clustered and rearranged based on the characteristics of the data in order to increase the operation performance. All item sizes are designed to be twice times for low vision agent. Generally, the F1–F4 hot keys on physical computer keyboard are adjacent, F5–F8 keys are adjacent, and F9–F12 keys are adjacent. In order to let visually impaired facilitate the operation quickly, the authors design the hot key of each area and function according the physical layout of the computer keyboard. Once the BUIHKC component gets the hot key F2–F4, the focus of computer cursor will jump to the begin item of specified area. Then visually impaired agent can use tab key to move to next item and use shift-tab to move back to previous item. Another design to help visually impaired agents to fill answers of the questionnaire quickly is that they can use the number key to jump to the corresponding questions and degrees within the questionnaire area. For example, each question has five degrees of satisfaction from five to one, several checking boxes of common dissatisfaction reasons, and one editing box to input the other suggestion from customer. The visually impaired agents can use tab key and shift–tab key to switch between questions, degrees, reasons, and other suggestion. Then they can use arrow keys, space bar and numeric keypad to choose questions, degrees, and dissatisfaction reasons. If they need to input other suggestion from customer, they can use Braille input method through BDP. Those designs can help visually impaired agent to find the items easily and fill the results rapidly. A STA component is designed to increase the working performance and meet the needs of visually impaired people. Because the visually impaired are more sensitive in hearing than normal sighted people, the normal playback rate for normal sighted people will reduced the efficiency of the visually impaired. A waveform synchronous overlap add method (WSOLA) (I˙lk & Gu¨ler, 2006) is used to adjust the speech synthesis playback speed. The increase of speech synthesis playback rate is also improved the overall efficiency in listening information and the successful amounts of telephone interview. After field trail with seven blind people, the best speech playback rate is designed to two or three times faster than normal sighted people. This component is also designed to provide personalized speech synthesis playback rate according to their requirement and eyesight situation of the visually impaired. A PNAS component is designed to select the phone number automatically. In order to filter the invalid phone number, this component can automatically select the phone number based on the service type or business category. For example, some services may select the mobile phone number to increase the chance of successful telephone interview and other services may select the fix line phone number. 2.4. Experimental conditions This study adopted an ABAB design (Richards, Taylor, Ramasamy, & Richards, 1999) to execute the tests, in which A represented the baseline phase (without ICT-ABTI system) and B represented the intervention phase (with ICT-ABTI system). All phases were carried out at Tamkang University. 2.4.1. Baseline The baseline phase included one month. The participants used desk phone devices to make phone call and then used computers to save the telephone interview results in text file. The computers were installed with screen reader software or magnification software to assist them. 2.4.2. Intervention The intervention phase was introduced by six months. The participants used ICT-ABTI system to make phone call from computer directly and then used ICT-ABTI system to store the telephone interview results to database.
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Fig. 3. The baseline and intervention data of participant one to seven.
3. Results An ICT-ABTI system was developed which integrated speech synthesis, Braille display, VoIP, and blind user interface design. Seven blind people were hired to do telephone interview jobs as normal sighted people by assisting with the system. We use amounts of successful telephone interview to measure the efficiency of this system and summarize the data for the seven participants as shown in Fig. 3. After six months filed trail in Tamkang University, they can accomplish 3070 effective telephone interviews per month by assisting with the system. During the baseline phase, the mean successful telephone interviews of the participant one to participant seven are 176, 201, 87, 192, 42, 48, and 33, respectively. During the intervention phase, the mean successful telephone interviews of the participant one to participant seven are 524.8, 483.5, 459.3, 511.7, 418.8, 347.3, and 324.5, respectively. 4. Discussion The definition of successful telephone interview is an agent making a call to customer, interviews all questions, and then saves the results of the interview. After field trail with seven blind people, the amounts of the successful telephone interview are 3070 per month. Without the ICT-ABTI system (baseline phase), the participants spend a lot of time on reading customer information, questionnaire, making phone call from desk phone devices and filling the interview results after finishing the interview with customers. The average successful telephone interviews of the seven participants are 779 per month. With the ICT-ABTI system, several designs were proposed to assist them and improve their working performance. The participants can read information easily and make phone call from computer. The average successful telephone interviews of the seven participants are 3070 per month. The results of seven participants emphasize that the ICT-ABI system was effective in assisting them to do telephone interview jobs independently. The results also show that the working performance can be improved effectively with appropriate design of operation working flow and accessible software. In addition, the ICT-ABTI system is using standard interface and flexible modular design. It can also assist visually impaired people to do similar outbound telephone services, which includes telephone market research, telephone opinion polls, telephone audience survey jobs, and telemarketing jobs. We have already shared the results and experience of this research through the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Digital Center platform to other APEC economies. An ‘‘APEC Visually Impaired Digital Opportunity Centers’’ was established in Philippines, China, and Malaysia. These centers can further facilitate visually impaired people into society and serve the community. We try to help blind people in APEC country to get more employment opportunities, reduce the digital divide for the visually impaired, hope to benefit more blind people, and improve the quality of blind people’s life. Let them feel self-reliant and fulfilled by assisting with ICT. In fact, the hearing, touch, and memory abilities of visually impaired people are better than sighted people. They are good at job of auditory, language, computers, instruments, art, and touch aspect. The results also show that as long as the enterprises or government are willing to redesign jobs and ICT systems for the visually impaired. They can do better than you can image. Enterprises just need to adjust the working processes, environmental equipment, and ICT systems for the visually impaired appropriately. These will improve the working ability and efficiency of them greatly. The first limitation of this research is the participants’ computer experience. All of the participants must have enough experience in using computers (Microsoft windows operation system) in order to operate the proposed system. The second limitation is that the results are based on seven blind people in Taiwan and the multiple disabilities may not be appropriated to use the method in this research. Therefore, a general conclusion of the system performance cannot be inferred from the results of this study.
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5. Conclusion This study aims to assist visually impaired people to accomplish telephone interview jobs at remote office. An ICT assisted blind telephone interview (ICT-ABTI) system was proposed and developed to help them to do customer satisfaction survey services for enterprises, government agencies, or academic institutions. The system was assessed by seven visually impaired agents. The results show that it can improve the working performance of them effectively. An ‘‘APEC Digital Opportunity Center for the Visually Impaired’’ was established to provide them another job opportunity and choice in Tamkang University, Taiwan. There are seven visually impaired agents working in this center and doing the telephone interview jobs. In the past, visually impaired can only choose massage for a living. They cannot do such kind of job without ICT-ABTI system before. But now they can undertake and choose a new kind of occupation other than massage after assisting with the system. They become productive, lucrative, self-reliant, fulfilled, and selfsufficient because they can use this system to do new kinds of occupation independently (Papadopoulos, 2014; Papadopoulos, Montgomery, & Chronopoulou, 2013). Therefore, if we can develop and provide appropriate operation working flow and accessible software by ICT in the future, the customer consulting job will be very suitable for visually impaired to do. The authors will continue to study the blind user interface of the customer consulting service with receiving phone call, increase working performance of the visually impaired, and extend to the APEC Digital Opportunity Center for the visually impaired to create more employment opportunities in the future. Further studies are necessary to extend the number of participants involved in the assessment to verify the generality of the present findings, and study telephone consulting service based on this research to design appropriate system for visually impaired people and assess its usability. Further research may also concern the extension of the system to allow visually impaired people working at home. References Cheverst, K., Clarke, K., Dewsbury, G., Hemmings, T., Kember, S., Rodden, T., et al. (2003). Designing assistive technologies for medication regimes in care settings. Universal Access in the Information Society, 2(3), 235–242. I˙lk, H. G., & Gu¨ler, S. (2006). Adaptive time scale modification of speech for graceful degrading voice quality in congested networks for VoIP applications. Signal Processing, 86(1), 127–139. Jang, Y., Wang, Y.-T., Lin, M.-H., & Shih, K. J. (2013). Predictors of employment outcomes for people with visual impairment in Taiwan: The contribution of disability employment services. Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness, 107(6), 469–480. Lancioni, G. E., O’Reilly, M., Singh, N., & Oliva, D. (2011). Enabling two women with blindness and additional disabilities to make phone calls independently via a computer-aided telephone system. Developmental Neurorehabilitation, 14, 283–289. Lancioni, G. E., O’Reilly, M. F., Singh, N. N., Sigafoos, J., Oliva, D., Alberti, G., et al. (2011). Two adults with multiple disabilities use a computer-aided telephone system to make phone calls independently. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 32(6), 2330–2335. Lancioni, G. E., Singh, N. N., O’Reilly, M. F., Sigafoos, J., Oliva, D., & Campodonico, F. (2013). Further evaluation of a telephone technology for enabling persons with multiple disabilities and lack of speech to make phone contacts with socially relevant partners. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 34(11), 4178–4183. McCarthy, T., Pal, J., & Cutrell, E. (2013). The voice has it: Screen reader adoption and switching behavior among vision impaired persons in India. Assistive Technology, 25(4), 222–229. Papadopoulos, K. (2014). The impact of individual characteristics in self-esteem and locus of control of young adults with visual impairments. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 35(3), 671–675. Papadopoulos, K., Montgomery, A. J., & Chronopoulou, E. (2013). The impact of visual impairments in self-esteem and locus of control. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 34(12), 4565–4570. Perilli, V., Lancioni, G. E., Singh, N. N., O’Reilly, M. F., Sigafoos, J., Cassano, G., et al. (2012). Persons with alzheimer’s disease make phone calls independently using a computer-aided telephone system. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 33(4), 1014–1020. Perilli, V., Lancioni, G. E., Laporta, D., Paparella, A., Caffo`, A. O., Singh, N. N., et al. (2013). A computer-aided telephone system to enable five persons with alzheimer’s disease to make phone calls independently. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 34(6), 1991–1997. Power, C., & Ju¨rgensen, H. (2010). Accessible presentation of information for people with visual disabilities. Universal Access in the Information Society, 9(2), 97–119. Richards, S. B., Taylor, R. L., Ramasamy, R., & Richards, R. Y. (1999). Single subject research: Applications in educational and clinical settings. New York: Wadsworth. Yeh, F.-H., Tsay, H.-S., & Liang, S.-H. (2005). Application of an adaptive-network-based fuzzy inference system for the optimal design of a Chinese braille display. Biomedical Engineering: Applications, Basis and Communications, 17(01), 50–60.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Research in Developmental Disabilities
Assisting the visually impaired to deal with telephone interview jobs using information and commutation technology Fung-Huei Yeh a,*, Chung-Chieh Yang a,b a b
Department of Mechanical and Electro-Mechanical Engineering, Tamkang University, Tamsui Dist., New Taipei City, Taiwan Chunghwa Telecommunication Laboratories, Yangmei City, Taoyuan County, Taiwan
A R T I C L E I N F O
A B S T R A C T
Article history: Received 22 April 2014 Received in revised form 16 July 2014 Accepted 6 August 2014 Available online 7 September 2014
This study proposed a new information and commutation technology assisted blind telephone interview (ICT-ABTI) system to help visually impaired people to do telephone interview jobs as normal sighted people and create more diverse employment opportunities for them. The study also used an ABAB design to assess the system with seven visually impaired people. As the results, they can accomplish 3070 effective telephone interviews per month independently. The results also show that working performance of the visually impaired can be improved effectively with appropriate design of operation working flow and accessible software. The visually impaired become productive, lucrative, and self-sufficient by using ICT-ABTI system to do telephone interview jobs. The results were also shared through the APEC Digital Opportunity Center platform to help visually impaired in Philippines, Malaysia and China. ß 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Information and commutation technology Visually impaired Text-to-speech Braille Telecommuting Telemarketing
1. Introduction Blind and low vision people are often considered as lacking ability to work because of the defects in visual acuity. A lot of visually impaired people are in the long-term unemployed status, and they are disadvantaged group in employment. The employment rate of them is low, and most of them make a living by massage in Taiwan (Jang, Wang, Lin, & Shih, 2013). This may be caused by the long-term legislation protection of massage jobs for the visually impaired to do only in Taiwan. Although the intention is good to protect the visually impaired people’s right for working, it also encourages them to make a living by massage. After Taiwan’s grand justice constitutional interpretation announced that the massage is no longer the exclusive rights and interests of the visually impaired. The unemployment situation of the visually impaired will become more serious. At mean time, the government also announced ‘‘Taiwan People with Disabilities Rights Protection Amendment Act’’. The new clauses stipulated that if the telephone service of government agencies employed more than 10 people, they should hire more than one visually impaired agent. This is a very good chance to follow government policy and help visually impaired people to do telephone service. There are many kinds of telephone service. Some telephone services are too complex for the visually impaired to do. The authors cooperated with resources center for the blind in Tamkang University to evaluate proper
* Corresponding author at: Department of Mechanical and Electro-Mechanical Engineering, Tamkang University, No. 151, Yingzhuan Rd., Tamsui Dist., New Taipei City 25137, Taiwan. Tel.: +886 2 26215656x2761; fax: +886 2 26209745. E-mail address: [email protected] (F.-H. Yeh). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ridd.2014.08.009 0891-4222/ß 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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telephone services and found that telephone interview or telemarketing jobs are very suitable for visually impaired to do. Not only the information is less than the others but also the operation steps are simpler than other telephone services. So we decided to choose these services as development target and plan to establish an information and communications technology (ICT) assisted telephone interview teleworking system for the visually impaired to undertake customer satisfaction telephone interview, telephone market research, telephone opinion polls, and telephone audience survey jobs. It also offers a new choice for government agencies and enterprises to hire visually impaired people. There are several assistive technologies have been developed for the visually impaired and the disabled. These techniques help them in learning, communicating with other people, getting information, working, and improving quality of life. For example, blind computer with screen reader software (McCarthy, Pal, & Cutrell, 2013), Braille display device (Yeh, Tsay, & Liang, 2005) and computer-aided telephone system with microswitch hardware to assist the disabled (Lancioni, O’Reilly, Singh, & Oliva, 2011; Lancioni, O’Reilly, Singh, Sigafoos, et al., 2011; Lancioni et al., 2013; Perilli et al., 2012, 2013). If we give appropriate assistance to the visually impaired to meet their need, it will be able to shorten the gap with the sighted people. Not only assist them to learn and get information, but also help them to do computer typing, customer service, or other ICT related jobs. There was a project named Towards Handicap Integration Negotiating Knowledge (THINK) supporting physical disabled employment in Europe. It professionally integrated 300 physical disabled people as teleworkers in 5 European countries. In Taiwan, there were also some similar cases and projects which tried to assist physical disabled people working in cell phone repair service. However, these employment opportunities are only available for the disabled with normal vision and do not take care of the visually impaired. In this study, the authors corporate with resources center for the blind in Tamkang University and use ICT assistive technologies to help visually impaired people to do telephone interview jobs. Among the many types of the customer service telecommuting jobs, the authors found that customer satisfaction telephone interview service is very suitable for visually impaired to do. The information of this service is limited. It does not like other customer services which have huge information to read and will cause blind people have trouble to get all information in time. Also, the visually impaired can work at home or remote accessible working environment by assisting with the internet and voice over internet protocol (VoIP) technologies. So we chose customer satisfaction survey telecommuting service as our first target and try to assist blind people to do this kind of jobs with ICT. In order to achieve the goal, several assistive technologies, like text-to-speech technology, Braille display technology, customer service technology, VoIP, and internet technology are integrated in one blind user interface to overcome the issues that visually impaired encountered in this service. The first issue is reading customer’s information. Because the visually impaired people cannot read the information which displayed on the computer screen, including customer’s name, address, service type, and so on. So, an assistive technology of reading customer’s data was used to solve this issue. We can use text-to-speech technology and Braille display technology to assist visually impaired getting information of the customer. The text-to-speech technology can convert the text into speech signal then output to headset. Let visually impaired people can hear the content of the customer’s information displayed on the computer screen. A text-to-speech engine contains text processing, prosody prediction, and synthesizer. First, it converts text to phonetic transcriptions, divides, and marks the text into prosodic units (phrases and sentences). Then the proper prosodic information will be generated according to the nearby phonetic transcriptions context. This part includes the computation of the target prosody (pitch contour and phoneme durations). Finally, the synthesizer uses the output information from text processing and prosody prediction modules to produce the speech signal. The Braille display assistive technology can be used to help visually impaired people to understand the content on the computer screen. It can translate the text information displayed on computer screen to Braille character. A Braille character is made up of six dots positions which arranged in a rectangle containing two columns of three dots each. A Chinese character consists of an initial, a final, and a tone. Each cell of Braille display can express one part. For example, a Chinese character ‘ba’ will be translated to dot ‘one, three, five’ as initial part ‘b’, dot ‘three, four, five’ as final part ‘a’, and dot three as tone in three cells. The Braille character is widely used by visually impaired people to read and write. The second issue is following the questionnaire and filling the answer of each question. The text-to-speech technology and Braille display technology are also used to solve this issue. When visually impaired people realize the content of the questionnaire, they can interview customers about service satisfaction by telephone. A Braille computer input method is also used to assist blind people filling the comment of the questionnaire. They can use ‘F’, ‘D’, ‘S’, ‘J’, ‘K’, ‘L’ keys on the computer keyboard as Braille dot one, two, three, four, five, six to input Chinese characters. For example, the input steps of Chinese character ‘ba’ are described as follows. The first step is pressing ‘F’, ‘S’, ‘K’ on the keyboard at the same time. It will be translated into Chinese initial ‘b’. The second step is pressing ‘S’, ‘J’, ‘K’ on the keyboard at the same time. It will be translated into Chinese final ‘a’. The final step is pressing ‘S’ to choose Chinese tone one to complete the input of this Chinese character. The third issue is making out bound call for visually impaired people. The traditional telephone equipment is not suitable and not easy for them to use. Visually impaired people have to memorize and dial the number themselves, after they read customer’s phone number from speech synthesis or Braille display device. It is very inconvenient for them. If we can assist them to dial from computer directly and communicate with customer by wearing a headset attached to computer sound card, it will enhance the performance of telephone interview greatly. So, a method of integrating VoIP, speech synthesis, and Braille display technologies to help visually impaired control the telephone from computer directly was proposed. It can control the computer telephone integration (CTI) server, make phone call, and hang up phone. It also can transmit speech data between computer headset and customer via VoIP. The speech synthesis and Braille display technologies are also used to prompt the dialing progress and telephone status to assist blind people.
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The goal of this work was to develop a new ICT assisted blind telephone interview (ICT-ABTI) system to increase the working performance of the visually impaired. This system included assistive operation flow design and accessible design based on the operating habits of the visually impaired. An assessment of this system was carried out with seven blind people by an ABAB design. This study is an independent public interest research which is not for commercial. The authors hope to share the experience of this study to encourage the government and enterprises to provide more working opportunities for blind people. The most important thing is to let the visually impaired work accessibly and feel self-reliant by assisting with ICT. 2. Methods 2.1. Participants Seven visually impaired people participated in this study. All of the participants graduated from university. All of the participants had enough experience in using computers (Microsoft windows operation system). The ethnic backgrounds of the participants are one Taiwanese aborigine and six Han Chinese. Participants were divided into mild, moderate, and severe visual impairment under ‘‘the physically and mentally handicapped, classification and qualification standards of Taiwan ministry of health and welfare’’. Participant’s ages ranged from 24 to 39 years of age (mean = 30). The comparisons of the demographic information for the participants are shown as Table 1. Participant one was a 24 year old female with mild degree of visual impairment. Participant two was a 25 year old male with mild degree of visual impairment. Participant three was a 39 year old female with moderate degree of visual impairment. Participant four was a 30 year old female with moderate degree of visual impairment. Participant five was a 28 year old male with severe degree of visual impairment. Participant six was a 37 year old female with severe of visual impairment. Participant seven was a 30 year old male with severe of visual impairment. The names of the participants have been changed to numbers in this study to protect their privacy. In addition to the participants’ willingness to be involved in this research, the legal representatives of the participants had provided formal consent for this research. 2.2. Apparatus and setting The study was carried out in a quiet room and computers were placed on a computer table. During baseline phase (without the use of the ICT-ABTI system), participants used conventional desk telephones, computers and Braille display devices. During intervention phases (with the use of the ICT-ABTI system), participants used headphones, computers and Braille display devices. 2.3. ICT assisted blind telephone interview system architecture In this study, a real case of ICT-ABTI system implementation in Tamkang University will be addressed. Based on integrating the three ICT assisted technologies mentioned above and user interface design from requirement of visually impaired, an ICT assisted blind telephone interview system was developed successfully. The system architecture of ICT-ABTI system is shown in Fig. 1. The system consists of an accessible client for visually impaired, an internet protocol private branch exchange (IP-PBX) platform, and a customer database. All components are modularized for scalability and future extension. The accessible client includes user interface design for the visually impaired. The IP-PBX is also a CTI server. It includes the telephone interface and the computer interface. It also handles call interface, controls telephone function, accepts VoIP data from accessible client and makes outbound call to customer through public switched telephone network (PSTN) or public land mobile network (PLMN) network. The customer database stores contact information of customer and the answers of questionnaire. Each component is connected through local area network (LAN). The voice data is transmitted between accessible client and IP-PBX by VoIP. 2.3.1. Operation flow design Because visually impaired people have inherent limitations, they cannot undertake customer service well without proper assistance. Therefore, the operation flow is designed as simply as possible to avoid complicated steps. First, a visually Table 1 The comparisons of the demographic information for the participants.
Participant Participant Participant Participant Participant Participant Participant
one two three four five six seven
Age
Gender
Level of impairment
Ethnic background
24 25 39 30 28 37 30
Female Male Female Female Male Female Male
Mild degree Mild degree Moderate degree Moderate degree Severe degree Severe degree Severe degree
Han Chinese Han Chinese Han Chinese Han Chinese Han Chinese Taiwanese aborigine Han Chinese
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Fig. 1. System architecture of ICT-ABTI system.
impaired agent uses a computer hot key to load one customer’s data and one questionnaire at the same time. Then they can listen to the synthesized speech and touch the displayed Braille of the content. They can also use a hot key to jump to the first data item of the grouped data, then switch to next data item by tab key, and switch back by shift-tab key. After the visually impaired agent familiarizes the content of customer’s information and questionnaire, they can give an instruction of contacting the customer to the system by a hot key. The system will automatically dial to the customer according the phone number hidden in the system memory. Then the visually impaired agent can interview the customer about the satisfaction of the service by asking question and filling the answer one by one. After the visual impairment agent hangs up the call by using another computer hot key, the system will save both the results of interview filled by the visually impaired and the voice recorded of this call. An experienced agent will draw the recorded voice file, check the quality of the interview, and retrain the visually impaired agent in order to improve the quality later. 2.3.2. Accessible client overview Based on interviews with the visually impaired, we realize that a good user interface design for the visually impaired is very important. It will affect the working performance of them greatly. We used user-centered design (Cheverst et al., 2003) with visually impaired people together. Every operation interface design has been confirmed by the visually impaired. Which includes data item position, data item sequence, data clustering, and hot key assignment. The design also fits the operating habits of the visually impaired and the requirements of them. Besides, the design of all Microsoft windows graphical user interface components are followed Microsoft active accessibility rules. Which includes accessible description, accessible name, and accessible role property. Therefore, the text information of each component on the computer screen can be captured, then pass to the speech synthesis component and Braille display component. The detailed architecture of accessible client is shown in Fig. 2. The accessible client consists of blind telephone control component (BTC), text-to-speech (TTS) component, Braille display processing (BDP) component, blind user interface and hot key control (BUIHKC) component, speech tempo adjustment (STA) component, and phone number automatic selection (PNAS) component. The BTC component is designed to use hot key operating. It also prompts the phone status via speech synthesis and Braille display device. It likes a special softphone for visually impaired people. The functions include dialing phone number, hanging up phone, processing speech data recorded from headset, transmitting the speech data to IP-PBX through VoIP and vice versa. It receives the hot key command from BUIHKC component, provides the telephone functions, and notifies the telephone status. This component also uses earcons (Power & Ju¨rgensen, 2010) to notify the events of telephone call in, call out, hang up, call forwarding, and call time reminder. This will help blind people to increase the working performance.
Fig. 2. The architecture of accessible client.
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The TTS component is designed to convert text data into speech signal and then output to headset. It receives the text information data captured from the computer screen or the BTC component. A visual impairment agent can hear system prompt information, business information, phone status message, and voice data remixed from VoIP during the phone call. This component will automatically detect and adjust the volume of TTS. It will decrease the TTS volume to avoid interference with the interview, when visually impaired agent listens to customer’s voice. This component will also process Chinese article to sentences, phrases, words, phonetic symbols, and output Chinese text processing results to BDP component. The BDP component receives information from TTS component. It will translate phonetic symbols to Braille codes and then output to Braille touch display device. Chinese phonetic symbols include 21 consonants, 16 vowels, 22 compound vowels, and five tones. The Chinese Braille uses six dot positions to represent the Chinese phonetic symbols. A visually impaired agent can understand the content on the computer screen by touching the Braille display device. This component also handles the Chinese Braille input. When the Braille codes are received from keyboard, it will be translated to Chinese syllables. When BUIHKC component receives the hot key commands from visually impaired agent, it will trigger the corresponding actions. The component will transfer the demanded commands to BTC and STA component. It will send the prompt messages to TTS and BDP component. Based on the characteristic of customer data, questionnaire and operating habits of the visually impaired, the data and user interface are grouped to meet the requirement of them. A computer dialog box is designed and split into four areas. It includes customer information area, service information area, questionnaire and survey result area, and function area. Each area is assigned to a hot key for quick operation and has related data items. The order of the items is clustered and rearranged based on the characteristics of the data in order to increase the operation performance. All item sizes are designed to be twice times for low vision agent. Generally, the F1–F4 hot keys on physical computer keyboard are adjacent, F5–F8 keys are adjacent, and F9–F12 keys are adjacent. In order to let visually impaired facilitate the operation quickly, the authors design the hot key of each area and function according the physical layout of the computer keyboard. Once the BUIHKC component gets the hot key F2–F4, the focus of computer cursor will jump to the begin item of specified area. Then visually impaired agent can use tab key to move to next item and use shift-tab to move back to previous item. Another design to help visually impaired agents to fill answers of the questionnaire quickly is that they can use the number key to jump to the corresponding questions and degrees within the questionnaire area. For example, each question has five degrees of satisfaction from five to one, several checking boxes of common dissatisfaction reasons, and one editing box to input the other suggestion from customer. The visually impaired agents can use tab key and shift–tab key to switch between questions, degrees, reasons, and other suggestion. Then they can use arrow keys, space bar and numeric keypad to choose questions, degrees, and dissatisfaction reasons. If they need to input other suggestion from customer, they can use Braille input method through BDP. Those designs can help visually impaired agent to find the items easily and fill the results rapidly. A STA component is designed to increase the working performance and meet the needs of visually impaired people. Because the visually impaired are more sensitive in hearing than normal sighted people, the normal playback rate for normal sighted people will reduced the efficiency of the visually impaired. A waveform synchronous overlap add method (WSOLA) (I˙lk & Gu¨ler, 2006) is used to adjust the speech synthesis playback speed. The increase of speech synthesis playback rate is also improved the overall efficiency in listening information and the successful amounts of telephone interview. After field trail with seven blind people, the best speech playback rate is designed to two or three times faster than normal sighted people. This component is also designed to provide personalized speech synthesis playback rate according to their requirement and eyesight situation of the visually impaired. A PNAS component is designed to select the phone number automatically. In order to filter the invalid phone number, this component can automatically select the phone number based on the service type or business category. For example, some services may select the mobile phone number to increase the chance of successful telephone interview and other services may select the fix line phone number. 2.4. Experimental conditions This study adopted an ABAB design (Richards, Taylor, Ramasamy, & Richards, 1999) to execute the tests, in which A represented the baseline phase (without ICT-ABTI system) and B represented the intervention phase (with ICT-ABTI system). All phases were carried out at Tamkang University. 2.4.1. Baseline The baseline phase included one month. The participants used desk phone devices to make phone call and then used computers to save the telephone interview results in text file. The computers were installed with screen reader software or magnification software to assist them. 2.4.2. Intervention The intervention phase was introduced by six months. The participants used ICT-ABTI system to make phone call from computer directly and then used ICT-ABTI system to store the telephone interview results to database.
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Fig. 3. The baseline and intervention data of participant one to seven.
3. Results An ICT-ABTI system was developed which integrated speech synthesis, Braille display, VoIP, and blind user interface design. Seven blind people were hired to do telephone interview jobs as normal sighted people by assisting with the system. We use amounts of successful telephone interview to measure the efficiency of this system and summarize the data for the seven participants as shown in Fig. 3. After six months filed trail in Tamkang University, they can accomplish 3070 effective telephone interviews per month by assisting with the system. During the baseline phase, the mean successful telephone interviews of the participant one to participant seven are 176, 201, 87, 192, 42, 48, and 33, respectively. During the intervention phase, the mean successful telephone interviews of the participant one to participant seven are 524.8, 483.5, 459.3, 511.7, 418.8, 347.3, and 324.5, respectively. 4. Discussion The definition of successful telephone interview is an agent making a call to customer, interviews all questions, and then saves the results of the interview. After field trail with seven blind people, the amounts of the successful telephone interview are 3070 per month. Without the ICT-ABTI system (baseline phase), the participants spend a lot of time on reading customer information, questionnaire, making phone call from desk phone devices and filling the interview results after finishing the interview with customers. The average successful telephone interviews of the seven participants are 779 per month. With the ICT-ABTI system, several designs were proposed to assist them and improve their working performance. The participants can read information easily and make phone call from computer. The average successful telephone interviews of the seven participants are 3070 per month. The results of seven participants emphasize that the ICT-ABI system was effective in assisting them to do telephone interview jobs independently. The results also show that the working performance can be improved effectively with appropriate design of operation working flow and accessible software. In addition, the ICT-ABTI system is using standard interface and flexible modular design. It can also assist visually impaired people to do similar outbound telephone services, which includes telephone market research, telephone opinion polls, telephone audience survey jobs, and telemarketing jobs. We have already shared the results and experience of this research through the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Digital Center platform to other APEC economies. An ‘‘APEC Visually Impaired Digital Opportunity Centers’’ was established in Philippines, China, and Malaysia. These centers can further facilitate visually impaired people into society and serve the community. We try to help blind people in APEC country to get more employment opportunities, reduce the digital divide for the visually impaired, hope to benefit more blind people, and improve the quality of blind people’s life. Let them feel self-reliant and fulfilled by assisting with ICT. In fact, the hearing, touch, and memory abilities of visually impaired people are better than sighted people. They are good at job of auditory, language, computers, instruments, art, and touch aspect. The results also show that as long as the enterprises or government are willing to redesign jobs and ICT systems for the visually impaired. They can do better than you can image. Enterprises just need to adjust the working processes, environmental equipment, and ICT systems for the visually impaired appropriately. These will improve the working ability and efficiency of them greatly. The first limitation of this research is the participants’ computer experience. All of the participants must have enough experience in using computers (Microsoft windows operation system) in order to operate the proposed system. The second limitation is that the results are based on seven blind people in Taiwan and the multiple disabilities may not be appropriated to use the method in this research. Therefore, a general conclusion of the system performance cannot be inferred from the results of this study.
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5. Conclusion This study aims to assist visually impaired people to accomplish telephone interview jobs at remote office. An ICT assisted blind telephone interview (ICT-ABTI) system was proposed and developed to help them to do customer satisfaction survey services for enterprises, government agencies, or academic institutions. The system was assessed by seven visually impaired agents. The results show that it can improve the working performance of them effectively. An ‘‘APEC Digital Opportunity Center for the Visually Impaired’’ was established to provide them another job opportunity and choice in Tamkang University, Taiwan. There are seven visually impaired agents working in this center and doing the telephone interview jobs. In the past, visually impaired can only choose massage for a living. They cannot do such kind of job without ICT-ABTI system before. But now they can undertake and choose a new kind of occupation other than massage after assisting with the system. They become productive, lucrative, self-reliant, fulfilled, and selfsufficient because they can use this system to do new kinds of occupation independently (Papadopoulos, 2014; Papadopoulos, Montgomery, & Chronopoulou, 2013). Therefore, if we can develop and provide appropriate operation working flow and accessible software by ICT in the future, the customer consulting job will be very suitable for visually impaired to do. The authors will continue to study the blind user interface of the customer consulting service with receiving phone call, increase working performance of the visually impaired, and extend to the APEC Digital Opportunity Center for the visually impaired to create more employment opportunities in the future. Further studies are necessary to extend the number of participants involved in the assessment to verify the generality of the present findings, and study telephone consulting service based on this research to design appropriate system for visually impaired people and assess its usability. Further research may also concern the extension of the system to allow visually impaired people working at home. References Cheverst, K., Clarke, K., Dewsbury, G., Hemmings, T., Kember, S., Rodden, T., et al. (2003). Designing assistive technologies for medication regimes in care settings. Universal Access in the Information Society, 2(3), 235–242. I˙lk, H. G., & Gu¨ler, S. (2006). Adaptive time scale modification of speech for graceful degrading voice quality in congested networks for VoIP applications. Signal Processing, 86(1), 127–139. Jang, Y., Wang, Y.-T., Lin, M.-H., & Shih, K. J. (2013). 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