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This proof-of-concept study evaluated the ability of individuals with moderate to severe cognitive impairments to use a mainstream cellular phone that was programmed with two new experimental interfaces (Flip and Picture modes). Success in placing a call was measured following a brief demonstration or instruction in phone use and again after a brief distraction. Sixteen individuals with Mini-Mental State Examination scores ranging from 6 to 19 (mean = 12.31, SD = 4.39) participated. The success rate using the Standard dialing mode was 12.5% during the instruction phase and 6.3% in the carryover phase. The Flip mode resulted in a 100% success rate for both the Instruction and Carryover phases; the Picture mode resulted in a 100% success rate in the Instruction phase and 81.3% success rate during Carryover phase. A potential application of this work is that mainstream cellular phones could be designed to include a simple feature that would make them usable by people with moderate to severe cognitive disabilities.

In this work, a consistency analysis between the prosody and the spectrum for Mandarin speech is presented. Found by an inspection on the pronunciation process of human beings, the consistency can be interpreted as a close correlated relation of a warping curve between the spectrum and the prosody intra a syllable. Through three steps in the procedure of the consistency analysis, the hidden Markov model (HMM) algorithm is used firstly to decode HMM-state sequences within a syllable at the same time as to divide them into three segments. Secondly, based on a designated syllable, the vector quantisation (VQ) with the Linde-Buzo-Gray algorithm is used to train the VQ codebooks of each segment. Thirdly, the prosodic vector of each segment is encoded as an index by VQ codebooks, and then the probability of each possible path is evaluated as a prerequisite to analyse the consistency. It is demonstrated experimentally that a consistency is definitely acquired in case the syllable is located exactly in the same word. These results offer a research direction that the warping process between the spectrum and the prosody intra a syllable must be considered in a text-to-speech system to improve the speech quality.

A population often overlooked in the design of cellular phones is people with cognitive disabilities. This study evaluated the ability of persons with moderate to severe cognitive impairments to use mainstream cellular phones programmed with experimental interface features that allowed operation with minimum cognitive ability. Two modes were tested. The first allowed an individual to place calls by simply opening a flip phone. The second displayed four pictures on the touchscreen and allowed a call to be made by touching one of the pictures. Sixteen individuals with Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores from 6 to 19 participated. There was a 100% success rate using the flip mode in both Instruction and Carryover conditions and a 100% success rate in Instruction and 81.3% success in Carryover for the picture mode. This was compared to standard 'touchtone' dialing mode success rate of 12.5% in the Instruction condition and 6.3% in Carryover condition.