Verifying speech intelligibility in classrooms.

Abstract

Classroom speech intelligibility has undoubtedly become a hot topic and is capturing attention on all fronts. While there has been widespread adoption of many new guidelines and standards, even the most precise initiatives will not reach their full potential if speech intelligibility is not directly verified in classrooms after they are built. Performance verification ultimately encourages a better final product and provides crucial measured data for validating design methods. To ensure measurable performance, criteria would have to be established at the outset of the design using a metric directly related to speech intelligibility such as speech transmission index. Current guidelines generally focus on reverberation time (RT) and background noise for improving speech communication in classrooms. While low background noise is a necessary component for speech intelligibility, there is not always a direct correlation between RT and speech intelligibility. For instance, improper placement of absorptive treat...