Authors:
Chris J. Hughes
1
and
John Paton
2
Affiliations:
1
School of Science, Engineering & Environment, University of Salford, U.K.
;
2
RNIB, 105 Judd Street, London, WC1H 9NE, U.K.
Keyword(s):
Voice Interaction, Immersive Video, User Interface, Accessibility.
Abstract:
Immersive environments present new challenges for all users, especially those with accessibility requirements. Once a user is fully immersed in an experience, they no longer have access to the devices that they would have in the real world such as a mouse, keyboard or remote control interface. However these users are often very familiar with new technology, such as voice interfaces. A user study as part of the EC funded Immersive Accessibility (ImAc) project identified the requirement for voice control as part of the projects fully accessible 360o video player in order to be fully accessible to people with sight loss. An assessment of speech recognition and voice control options was made. It was decided to use an Amazon Echo with a node.js gateway to control the player through a web-socket API. This proved popular with users despite problems caused by the learning stage in the command structure required for Alexa, the timeout on the Echo and the difficulty of working with Alexa whils
t wearing headphones. The web gateway proved to be a robust control mechanism which lends itself to being extended in various ways.
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