Since its 1947 founding, ETS has conducted and disseminated scientific research to support its products and services, and to advance the measurement and education fields. In keeping with these goals, ETS is committed to making its research freely available to the professional community and to the general public. Published accounts of ETS research, including papers in the ETS Research Report series, undergo a formal peer-review process by ETS staff to ensure that they meet established scientific and professional standards. All such ETS-conducted peer reviews are in addition to any reviews that outside organizations may provide as part of their own publication processes. Peer review notwithstanding, the positions expressed in the ETS Research Report series and other published accounts of ETS research are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Officers and Trustees of Educational Testing Service.The Daniel Eignor Editorship is named in honor of Dr. Daniel R. Eignor, who from 2001 until 2011 served the Research and Development division as Editor for the ETS Research Report series. The Eignor Editorship has been created to recognize the pivotal leadership role that Dr. Eignor played in the research publication process at ETS. The work described in this report is the first phase of a project to provide easy-to-use tools for authoring and rendering secondary-school algebra-level math expressions in synthesized speech that is useful for students with blindness or low vision. This report describes the initial development, software implementation, and evaluation of the ClearSpeak speech style-implemented for initial testing purposes using prerecorded synthetic speech, and implemented later in the project as a collection of predefined rules and in some cases variations (called preferences in ClearSpeak)-for automatically generated synthetic speech. In addition to wording, speech styles can specify pausing (or other prosodic cues) within the speech. The ClearSpeak style focuses on speech for secondary school algebra. The evaluation compares a prototype of the ClearSpeak style to two pre-existing speech styles: MathSpeak and SimpleSpeak. The primary parameters evaluated are students' success in drawing conclusions about the content and structure of math expressions and their perceptions regarding the familiarity, helpfulness, and understandability of the expressions as spoken. Please see Appendix E for information on obtaining a version of this report that is fully accessible using the tools described.
ETS Research Report Series ISSN 2330-8516 R E S E A R C H R E P O R T
Development and Initial Evaluation of the ClearSpeak Style for Automated Speaking of AlgebraKeywords math; accessibility; blindness; visual impairment; text-to-speech; MathML; algebra; STEM; ClearSpeak; assistive technology; screen reader doi:10. 1002/ets2.12103 There is a great need to improve mathematics achievement in students with visual impairments (SVIs), for whom there is a large achievement gap compared to students without disabilit...