• Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.47-58
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• 2006

People tend to control their speech rate to help those with listening problems such as hearing impaired people. The aim of this study was to investigate effects of speech rate on the sentence perception by 10 adults with cochlear implantation. The sample speech included 42 sentences at normal, slow, and very slow speed focusing on the overall duration, vowel or pause duration. The subjects listened to the speech and wrote down what they heard. Each correct syllable of the content words in the sentence was counted to obtain the score. Partial points were given to the incomplete syllables. Results of this study were as follows: 1. The changes of speech rate had some influence on the sentence perception score by the cochlear implanted people. 2. In slow pause condition, the controlled speech rate had a positive effect on the perception score.

• Smart Media Journal
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• v.11 no.11
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• pp.17-24
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• 2022

With the spread of smart speakers based on voice recognition technology and deep learning technology, not only non-disabled people, but also the blind or physically handicapped can easily control home appliances such as lights and TVs through voice by linking home network services. This has greatly improved the quality of life. However, in the case of speech-impaired people, it is impossible to use the useful services of the smart speaker because they have inaccurate pronunciation due to articulation or speech disorders. In this paper, we propose a personalized voice classification technique for the speech-impaired to use for some of the functions provided by the smart speaker. The goal of this paper is to increase the recognition rate and accuracy of sentences spoken by speech-impaired people even with a small amount of data and a short learning time so that the service provided by the smart speaker can be actually used. In this paper, data augmentation and one cycle learning rate optimization technique were applied while fine-tuning ResNet18 model. Through an experiment, after recording 10 times for each 30 smart speaker commands, and learning within 3 minutes, the speech classification recognition rate was about 95.2%.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.26 no.12
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• pp.105-110
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• 2021

In this paper, we design and implement an Android mobile application that helps hearing impaired people communicate based on STT(Speech-to-Text) and TTS(Text-to-Speech) APIs and accelerometer sensor of a smartphone. This application provides the ability to record what the hearing-Impairment person's interlocutor is saying with a microphone, convert it to text using the STT API, and display it to the hearing-Impairment person. In addition. In addition, when a hearing-impaired person inputs a text using the TTS API, it is converted into voice and told to the interlocutor. When a hearing-impaired person shakes their smartphone, an accelerometer based background service function is provided to run the application. The application implemented in this paper provides a function that allows hearing impaired people to communicate easily with other people when communicating with others without using sign language as a video call.

• Proceedings of the KOSOMBE Conference
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• v.1996 no.11
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• pp.111-113
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• 1996

The impaired person and the elderly who has hearing loss have been continuously increased and these people's desire for participating society as a producer has been increased also. So they strongly request the aid device which can compensate their handicap. The healing aid telephone is one of the basic aid devices that helps the hearing impaired to communicate with other people and to acquire useful information. We design the new model of the hearing aid telephone and test it's efficiency in three fields - electrical, speech perception, user test. From the result of the test we certify that the new model is better for the hearing impaired to understand the meaning of telephone speech than the old general models. We expect that the advanced healing aid telephone can be developed by the research about speech perception characteristics of the hearing impaired in engineering and clinical side.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.45-52
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• 2010

It takes a lot of time or is even impossible to communicate for people with physical disability and/or speech impairment. Augmentative and Alternative Communication System is an important computerized tool that makes it possible for those people to communicate. Since not only speech impaired people, but also people with other physical disability cannot use conventional computer input devices easily such as keyboard and mouse, so more simple input devices are need for them to communicate. Thus, in this paper, I designed and implemented a communication aid system, with which they can communicate with simple inputs. I collected frequently used sentences by people with disability and categorized them into 9 everyday language groups. With these categories, they can select any sentence with few simple selections. If none of these categories includes the sentences they want, ChunJiIn keyboard is provided so that they can input the sentences, which can be added to the existing language groups for later use. The priority levels of the sentences in each group is constantly readjusted based on usage frequency so that the number of inputs can be reduced.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.13-20
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• 2008

Although digital hearing aid algorithms have been developed to compensate hearing loss and to help hearing impaired people to communicate with others, digital hearing aid user still complain about difficulty of hearing the speech. The reason could be the quality of speech through digital hearing aid is insufficient to understand the speech caused by feedback, residual noise and etc. And another thing is masking effect among formants that makes sound quality low. In this study, we measured the masking characteristics of normal listeners and hearing impaired listeners having presbyacusis to confirm masking effect in speech itself. The experiment is composed of 5 tests; pure tone test, speech reception threshold (SRT) test, word recognition score (WRS) test, puretone masking test and speech masking test. In speech masking test, there are 25 speeches in each speech set. And log likelihood ratio (LLR) is introduced to evaluate the distortion of each speech objectively. As a result, the speech perception became lower by increasing the quantity of formant enhancement. And each enhanced speech in a speech set has statistically similar LLR, however speech perception is not. It means that acoustic masking effect rather than distortion influences speech perception. In actuality, according to the result of frequency analysis of the speech that people can not answer correctly, level difference between first formant and second formant is about 35dB, and it is similar to result of pure tone masking test(normal hearing subject:36.36dB, hearing impaired subject:32.86dB). Characteristics of masking effect is not similar between normal listeners and hearing impaired listeners. So it is required to check the characteristics of masking effect before wearing a hearing aid and to apply this characteristics to fitting.

• Journal of the HCI Society of Korea
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.5-12
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• 2016

The number of visually-impaired people using a smartphone is currently increasing with the help Text-to-Speech(TTS). TTS converts text data in a mobile application into sound data, and it only allows sequential search. For this reason, the location of buttons and contents inside an application should be determined carefully. However, little attention has been made on TTS service environment during the development of mobile newspaper application. This makes visually-impaired people difficult to use these applications. Furthermore, a mobile application interface which also reflects the desire of the low vision is necessary. Therefore, this paper presents a mobile newspaper interface which considers the accessibility and the desire of various visually impaired people. To this end, the proposed interface locates buttons with the consideration of TTS service environment and provides search functionality. The proposed interface also enables visually impaired people to use the application smoothly by filtering out the words that are pronounced improperly and providing the proper explanation for every button. Finally, several functionalities such as increasing font size and color reversal are implemented for the low vision. Simulation results show that the proposed interface achieves better performance than other applications in terms of search speed and usability.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.59 no.4
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• pp.831-840
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• 2010

In this paper, we propose a hearing impairment simulator considering reduced frequency selectivity and asymmetrical auditory filter of the hearing impaired, and we verified the reduced frequency selectivity and asymmetrical auditory filter affected in speech perception through experiments. The reduced frequency selectivity has made embodied by spectral smearing using LPC(linear prediction coding). The shapes of auditory filter are asymmetrical different with each center frequency. Hearing impaired person which has hearing loss was differently changed with that of normal hearing people and it has different value for speech of quality through auditory filter. The experiments confirmed subjective test and objective test. The subjective experiments are composed of 4 kinds of tests: pure tone test, SRT(speech reception threshold) test, and WRS(word recognition score) test without spectral smearing, and WRS test with spectral smearing. The experiment of the hearing impairment simulator was performed from 9 subjects who have normal ears. The amount of spectral smearing was controlled by LPC order. The asymmetrical auditory filter of proposed hearing impairment simulator was simulated and then some tests to estimate the filter's performance objectively were performed. The objective experiment as simulated auditory filter's performance evaluation method used PESQ(perceptual evaluation of speech quality) and LLR(log likelihood ratio) for speech through auditory filter. The processed speech was evaluated objective speech quality and distortion using PESQ and LLR value. When hearing loss processed, PESQ and LLR value have big difference according to asymmetrical auditory filter in hearing impairment simulator.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.27-34
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• 2009

Hearing impaired person's hearing loss has personally various shape, so existing symmetrical auditory filter of frequency band method wasn't properly simulated the hearing impaired person's various hearing loss shape. The shapes of auditory filter are asymmetrical different with each center frequency and each input level. Hearing impaired person which has hearing loss was differently changed with that of normal hearing people and it has different value for speech of quality through auditory filter. In this study, the asymmetrical auditory filter was simulated and then some tests to estimate the filter's performance objectively were performed. The experiment as simulated auditory filter's performance evaluation method used perceptual evaluation of speech quality (PESQ) and log likelihood ratio (LLR) for speech through auditory filter. In the test, processed speech was evaluated objective speech quality and distortion using PESQ and LLR value. When hearing loss processed, PESQ and LLR value have big difference between symmetrical and asymmetrical auditory filter. It means that the difference of the shape auditory filter may affect to speech quality. Especially, when hearing loss existed, auditory filter changing according to asymmetrical shape for each center frequency affected to perceive speech quality of the hearing impaired.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.17 no.8
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• pp.1025-1032
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• 2014

Until now, there were few supports on reading the mathematical expressions except text based expressions, so it is important to provide the reading of the mathematical expressions. Also, there are various of obstacles for people who are not visually impaired when reading the mathematical expressions such as the situation of presbyopia, reading the mathematical expressions in the vehicles, and so on. Therefore, supports for people to read mathematical expressions in various situations are needed. In the previous research, the main goal was to transform the mathematical expressions into Korean text based on Content MathML. In this paper, we expanded the range of the research from a reading disabilities to people who are not reading disabilities. We tested appropriacy of the rules we made to convert the MathML based expressions into speech and defined 3 math-to-speech rules in korean based on levels. We implemented the mathematical expressions by using 3 math-to-speech rules. We took comprehension test to find out whether our math to speech rules are well-defined or not.