Can better perception become a disadvantage? Synthetic speech perception in congenitally blind users
ENModern Text-To-Speech systems are rarely tested on non standard user groups, such as people with impairments. Nevertheless, evidence suggests that some of these groups might perceive synthetic speech differently (better or worse) than regular users. The current study investigated for the first time how synthetic speech is perceived by blind vs. sighted users. For this purpose, we used a speeded AX discrimination task and tested how sighted and blind listeners perceive synthetic speech of different qualities. Results show that blind participants had significantly better discrimination on this task, and both groups performed worse when the perceptual differences in the synthetic speech were smaller. This suggests that blind participants were indeed more sensitive to the acoustic characteristics of synthetic speech compared to their sighted peers. We discuss implications for speech perception and the development of modern speech technologies. Index Terms: speech synthesis, Text-To-Speech, blind users, speech perception, behavioral methods, synthesized speech evaluation. [From the publication]
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