Researchers have developed a new voice assistant that allows people with visual impairments to get web content as quickly and as effortlessly as possible from smart speakers and similar devices.
A new study, led by University of Waterloo Faculty of Mathematics student Alexandra Vtyurina, who collaborated with Microsoft researchers and the University of Washington’s Assistant Professor, Leah Findlater, found a way to merge the best elements of voice assistants with screen readers to create a tool that makes free-form web searches easier.
As reported by the study presented at the meeting 1st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, the tool is called Voice Exploration, Retrieval, and Search (VERSE).
“People with visual impairments often rely on screen readers, and increasingly voice-based virtual assistants, when interacting with computer systems. Virtual assistants are convenient and accessible but lack the ability to deeply engage with content, such as read beyond the first few sentences of an article, list alternative search results, and suggestions,” said Vtyurina, a PhD candidate in Waterloo’s David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, who undertook the study during her internship at Microsoft Research.
“In contrast, screen readers allow for deep engagement with accessible content, and provide fine-grained navigation and control, but at the cost of reduced walk-up-and-use convenience,” Vtyurina added. Our prototype,
VERSE, adds screen reader-like capabilities to virtual assistants and allows other devices, such as smartwatches to serve as input accelerators to smart speakers. VERSE can also be paired with an app, which runs on a smartphone or a smartwatch and can serve as input accelerators.
—Zee Media Newsroom
