Auditory Menus Are Not Just Spoken Visual Menus: A Case Study of %26quot;Unavailable%26quot; Menu Items

作者：Jeon Myounghoon^*; Gupta Siddharth; Davison Benjamin K; Walker Bruce N

来源：Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, 2012, 60(7-8): 505-518.

Auditory menus can supplement or replace visual menus to enhance usability and accessibility. Despite an increase of research on auditory displays, more research is still needed to optimize the auditory-specific aspects of these implementations. Here, we report on three studies to determine how best to render the important concept of an unavailable menu item. In Study 1, 10 undergraduates and 4 visually impaired adults compared various speech pairs for available and unavailable menu items. Participants preferred a female voice over a male voice and preferred our new implementations such as whispered and attenuated voices for unavailable items. In Study 2, 23 undergraduates navigated an MS Word-like auditory menu with a mix of available and unavailable items. Using a whispered voice for unavailable items was favored over an attenuated voice and saying %26quot;unavailable.%26quot; In Study 3, 26 undergraduates navigated a novel auditory menu. With practice, whispering unavailable items was more effective than skipping unavailable items. Results are discussed in terms of acoustic theory, cognitive menu selection theory, and user interface accessibility.

• 出版日期2012-8