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Supporting the creative drive: investigating paralinguistic voice as a mode of interaction for artists with upper limb disabilities

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Abstract

For people with upper limb disabilities visual art is an important activity that allows for expression of individuality and independence. They show remarkable endurance, patience and determination to adapt their remaining capabilities to create visual art. There are significant advantages of digital technologies in assisting artists with upper limb disabilities. Paralinguistic voice recognition technologies have proven to be a particularly promising mode of interaction. Despite these benefits, technological support for people with upper limb disabilities to create visual art is scarce. This paper reports on a number of case studies of several artists with upper limb disabilities. These case studies illustrate the struggles they face to be creative and also show the significant advantages of digital technologies in assisting such artists. An investigation into people’s ability to use the volume of their voice to control cursor movement to create drawings on the screen is also reported. With motivation, training and practise, use of volume to control drawing tasks shows great promise. It is believed that paralinguistic voice has wider implications beyond assisting artists with upper limb disabilities, such as: an alternative mode of interaction for disabled people to perform tasks other than creating visual art, alternative mode of interaction for hands busy environments and as a voice training system for people with speech impairments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Engineering and IT, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia

    Dharani Perera

  2. School of Computing Science, Middlesex University, London, NW4 4BT, UK

    R. T. Jim Eales

  3. School of Engineering and IT, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia

    Kathy Blashki

Authors
  1. Dharani Perera
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  2. R. T. Jim Eales
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  3. Kathy Blashki
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Correspondence to Dharani Perera.

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Perera, D., Jim Eales, R.T. & Blashki, K. Supporting the creative drive: investigating paralinguistic voice as a mode of interaction for artists with upper limb disabilities. Univ Access Inf Soc 8, 77–88 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-008-0130-3

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