Speech vs. touch-tone: Telephony interfaces for information access by low literate users

Information access by low literate users is a difficult task. Critical information, such as in the field of healthcare, can often mean the difference between life and death. We have developed spoken language interface prototypes aimed at low literate users, and tested them with community health work...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in2009 International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD) pp. 447 - 457
Main Authors Sherwani, J., Palijo, S., Mirza, S., Ahmed, T., Ali, N., Rosenfeld, R.
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published IEEE 01.04.2009
Subjects
Centralized control
community health workers
Cultural differences
Decision making
Educational programs
illiteracy
information access
Local government
low literate
Power generation economics
Process planning
Resource management
Speech
Speech technology
spoken language interfaces
Telephony
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Summary:Information access by low literate users is a difficult task. Critical information, such as in the field of healthcare, can often mean the difference between life and death. We have developed spoken language interface prototypes aimed at low literate users, and tested them with community health workers in Pakistan. We present results showing that 1) in contrast to previous reports in the literature, well-designed speech interfaces significantly outperform touch-tone equivalents for both low-literate and literate users, and that 2) literacy significantly impacts task success for both modalities.
ISBN:1424446627
9781424446629
DOI:10.1109/ICTD.2009.5426682