指点字の打点教示システムの開発〜音声認識を利用した打点指と打点位置の教示〜

Abstract

Finger Braille is one of tactual communication media of deafblind people. Deafblind people who are skilled in Finger Braille can catch up with speech conversation by changing length and strength of dotting at the end of clauses. In this paper, we developed a Finger Braille Teaching System and designed the teaching interface which taught the clauses explicitly. The Teaching System recognized non-disabled people's speech and converted to the Braille code. By parsing Braille code, the Teaching System segmented the Braille code into clauses. Then the dot pattern of the clauses was displayed explicitly. By observing the dot pattern, non-disabled people dotted Finger Braille to deafblind people. As results of two evaluation experiments, correct ratio of speech recognition except substitutions of interjections of 95.6% was achieved after one speech training and one restatement. Accuracy of conversion to Braille code and accuracy of clause segmentation was 100% in test sentences. Error ratio of dotting Finger Braille was only 1.3%. And a communication experiment with a blind receiver who is skilled in Finger Braille was carried out. Two non-disabled senders could communicate in Finger Braille. Total communication speed was 21.8 characters/min. One sender could change length of dotting at the end of clauses.