1. VOICE Project's results and Reports
2. Background: the initial Project's Proposal
3. The VOICE Project's strongest point and the weakest one
4. The User Groups and the user needs' Reports
5. The VOICE Web Site and the present Reports
6. Conclusion
7. Final Reports and Peer Review Reports
1. VOICE Project's results and Reports
The Consortium has achieved all its foreseen objectives and some additional ones too, as it has been described in the Final Review Report and in a series of Reports loaded on the VOICE Web Site and submitted printed on paper to the Review's Experts.
The format in which the information was presented was either very concise (self-assessment at page 2 of the Final Review Report) or very detailed (answers to a long series of specific questions of the Final Review Form, which probably did not fit for this Accompanying Measure). Also some Reports written by the users gave the same impression: either short abstracts or long explications and details.
Therefore the Final Review Panel asked for modifying, completing or resuming such documents and for submitting some Peer Review Reports and some additional shorter and clearer documents. For instance, a document for which some intervention was recommended, was the User Needs Report: approximately 150 pages, dealing with the user needs in human computer interfaces and their usability in disability. It included a full section on speech recognition and on the VOICE prototype, with complete information, which nevertheless was so "immersed" in the rest to be not visible at a first glance.
The present document, which does not follow the formal constraints of the Final Review Form, aims at giving a general overview of the Project's activities and results. It introduces, in a more immediate style, the Peer Review Reports as well as the other Reports that the Consortium is presenting now, focused each on a particular Project's area. This allowed preparing documents easier to read, more attractive and more useful for the final users. We consider important to explain this approach, which corresponds to the particular aims of the VOICE Project Accompanying Measure.
2. Background: the initial Project's Proposal
The continuous progresses in Computer Science are so rapid that it is important to pay attention to the time scale reference:
we discussed the ideas at the basis of the VOICE
Project's Proposal in 1996 and we presented them in 1997:
…so far ago, in the informatics age!
…but just a moment ago, in the disability approach to the technical
aids!
At that time, speech recognition packages on PC were moving their first steps and the available systems were rather slow and based still on "disjointed speaking" (pauses between words were necessary). Internet, of course, existed, but was a rather new opportunity, mainly used by universities and large organisations. Only a limited number of small organisations, Associations of people with disability, schools and private families were equipped for its use.
The idea of proposing to use speech recognition systems for subtitling conferences and television broadcasts, and that users could discuss of this theme via the Internet from home or from the Associations, was so new and impressive, that actually the Proposal was accepted. More precisely, it was accepted as an Accompanying Measure, since no one could, at that time, propose a final product copying with the specific requirements of the hearing impaired users. The difficulties were so evident, that the Accompanying Measure's objective was only limited to "developing awareness", both on speech recognition and on the use of the Internet as a communication tool.
3. The VOICE Project's strongest point and the weakest one
And we did succeed!
At the basis of the Proposal, there was the voice-to-text recognition prototype demonstrator. The Consortium had clearly stated in the Project's Proposal that this was only a demonstration means, in order to present a concrete "futuristic" object to animate the discussions and to encourage the first tests, not a working tool.
Nevertheless, we could develop a real working tool and demonstrate that its use was possible and even reasonably easy. And we did this, not by a large research team producing a new expensive tool. We achieved this goal by a small team, spending days, nights and holidays discussing and testing how to use inexpensive commercially available products, adapting them according to the "design for all approach" supported by TIDE.
We used the prototype for live subtitling a series of conferences at the beginning of 1998 in Italian and Spanish languages. We also tested it in English and German and presented it to the TIDE Congress in Helsinki in June 1998. By the way, it should not be forgotten that this hard trial period was self-funded by the Partners, due to a long administrative delay in the Contract's signature. The users, informed of the activities, asked for presentations. They were confused by the different sources of funding (Brussels or Ispra) and we had to protect the EC's image and that of the Consortium.
At the Project's official starting, we were ready and we subtitled a few hours of presentations at the ICCHP Conference in Vienna, in English, and at the User Group's Workshop, in German.
The news of this success spread around so quickly that we were submerged by requests of presentations. We organised them, in a much larger number than initially foreseen, as a way of thanking all the Associations and organisations, who trusted us in the previous self-supported long period.
Even if, in presenting the prototype, we underlined that it was just a "demonstrator", the users were enthusiast in seeing it working on-line. And we felt the same attitude in the Project's Reviews, where the Experts in some way compared the results achieved by the VOICE Accompanying Measure with those of other Projects having as goal the development of a final tool.
Everyone encouraged us to go on, with no care of the Project's aim and of its limited budget. The fact of having achieved greater results than those foreseen became the Project's strongest point. But, at the same time, this was also the weakest one, reducing, de facto, the users' collaboration in discussing details. The overload due to the increasing number of conferences limited also the time for reviewing the different Reports.
4. The User Groups and the user needs' Reports
We were well aware of the prototype's limits: it worked rather well, but only by our voice, after a rather long training, on a PC fully installed by us, taking care of several technical details, etc. We could use the system for presentations based on a dictionary prepared before, with limits during the free discussions. We still needed to exchange more points of view with the users on the subtitles' presentation style, characters' dimension and colours, number of lines, their position or scrolling.
Nevertheless, the users from the Associations of people with hearing impairment were so enthusiast of the system's general potentialities, that they were unwilling or unable of discussing of the user needs analysis and of the prototype's options. In order to have more independent users' advice, we enlarged the tests to the schools, where the teachers were starting using the prototype in the classroom. In this application the difficulties were greater, the lessons being less pre-organised than the conferences and involving normally hearing pupils with a few hearing impaired schoolmates. This situation underlined additional needs for the system's use.
So we took care of all the validation's suggestions of both the user groups and included in the software a large choice of options. This approach stimulated the discussion of the user needs also in the hearing impaired user group, who made suggestions when we presented them several alternatives of working prototypes. And, finally, we let most of the options all along the users' validation period and even, later on, in the final release. In fact, particular options, which could appear as less important, were appreciated in special situations (for instance, particular characters' dimension and background contrast for users with partial visual impairment).
In this sense, JRC-ISIS in defining the prototype's developing guidelines, and FBL in applying them in the tests, felt that they were performing a good user needs analysis and an excellent prototype's validation. Kepler University, when receiving the prototype' versions, completed this set of information, by following a more theoretical approach, in order to test and validate the prototype in different situations of use, different language and culture.
Approximately at the end of the Project's first year, all the Project's tasks were progressing very well, achieving important and encouraging results, even if the integration of the different tasks was not yet achieved. The first Review's Panel was impressed by the Consortium's positive approach and by the general achieved results, as the prototype's good performances and the high number of organised conferences. But it also saw a partially disomogenueous set of user needs' analysis: practical aspects with the Italian hearing impaired users, theoretical aspects with the Austrian hearing impaired users, the needs of the Italian schoolteachers or the needs of the Austrian blind user. And also the needs reported in different fields, as for television subtitling or telephone communication and videoconferencing.
The Panel's Experts recommended performing a more detailed user needs analysis, including all the different considered aspects. Kepler University did this in the Project's second year, producing a Report that was then rather large and theoretical. The Final Review's Panel considered it even too large and too theoretical and recommended presenting it in a shorter format, which we did now.
5. The VOICE Web Site and the present Reports
Taking in mind all the above-mentioned points, as a final compromise we are presenting here a reduced set of Reports, one for each different field of Project's activities. We chosen the most clear and readable ones, those which could at the same time give a general idea of that field and get the readers' interest to look for additional information in the Reports written by other users and published on the VOICE Web Site.
We also asked other groups of independent users to perform a Peer Review on the Project's activities and results, which we are presenting hereafter.
As it appears in the Reports, the VOICE Web Site demonstrated itself as an important means for spreading information. Little by little all the users get familiar with its use and transmitted us several documents to load on it. We did so, with the aim of developing a Site that the users could feel as being their own, encouraging them in more visiting it and collaborating to its enlargement. The statistics on the Site's accesses confirm a regular use in the day, in the evening and in the weekends, which well corresponds to a Site addressed to the Associations.
Therefore we loaded the Reports' drafts from the users and discussed with them the comments and suggestions received by other users via e-mail or via the VOICE Web Forum. We frequently updated the draft versions, so that the present approximately 500 Web pages correspond to approximately 5000 pages loaded and modified time by time. Also the few hundreds messages, visible in the Forum and in the user needs' Section, are just a sub-set of the approximately 10000 messages exchanged with the users via e-mail.
These documentsand the whole VOICE Site and Discussion Forum are among the Project's main results. A common approach and a coherent general structure allow some minor differences in the Sections' formats and languages. Reports on main and minor events, pictures of the participants, details, news on Associations meetings as well as on technical innovations, attract the users, who are getting familiar with the Internet. The Associations AFA, ALFA, CECOEV and the school of Arona asked JRC-ISIS to manage their Web Sites as part of the VOICE Project. Thanks to experience so achieved, they are now opening their own Web Site or continue using the one on the VOICE Project, managing it by their own at a distance via the Internet.
Even if the Site is mainly addressed to users with hearing impairment, we considered important to develop it following the Web Accessibility rules, allowing possible contacts with users with other impairment, including visual impairment.
7. Final Reports and Peer Review Reports
These Reports, together with the present Report, constitute a whole set off information, covering most of the Project's activities. This set is aimed at giving a VOICE Project's general overview, as far as possible by the "written on the Internet" voice of the final users. Following the above mentioned approach of ensuring the information flow via the Internet, we loaded the Reports on the VOICE Web Site. We also transmit copies printed on paper for the administrative aspects: some of the documents are presented for the first time (4, 6, 7, 10), while others are updated or translated versions of previous ones (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 9).
February 2001
Giuliano Pirelli