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Abstract

The objective of the Pronunciation Task Force is to develop normative specifications and best practices guidance collaborating with other W3C groups as appropriate, to provide for proper pronunciation in HTML content when using text to speech (TTS) synthesis. This document provides various user scenarios highlighting the need for standardization of pronunciation markup, to ensure that consistent and accurate representation of the content. The requirements that come from the user scenarios provide the basis for the technical requirements/specifications.

Status of This Document

This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document. A list of current W3C publications and the latest revision of this technical report can be found in the W3C technical reports index at https://www.w3.org/TR/.

This is a First Public Working Draft of Pronunciation User Scenarios by the Accessible Platform Architectures Working Group. It was initially developed by the Pronunciation Task Force to provide various user scenarios highlighting the need for standardization of pronunciation markup, to ensure that consistent and accurate representation of the content. The requirements that come from the user scenarios provide the basis for the technical requirements/specifications.

To comment, file an issue in the W3C pronunciation GitHub repository. If this is not feasible, send email to public-pronunciation@w3.org (subscribe, archives). Comments are requested by 14 October 2019. In-progress updates to the document may be viewed in the publicly visible editors' draft.

Publication as a First Public Working Draft does not imply endorsement by the W3C Membership. This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other than work in progress.

This document was produced by a group operating under the W3C Patent Policy. The group does not expect this document to become a W3C Recommendation. W3C maintains a public list of any patent disclosures made in connection with the deliverables of the group; that page also includes instructions for disclosing a patent. An individual who has actual knowledge of a patent which the individual believes contains Essential Claim(s) must disclose the information in accordance with section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy.

This document is governed by the 1 March 2019 W3C Process Document.

2. User Scenarios

The purpose of developing user scenarios is to facilitate discussion and further requirements definition for pronunciation standards developed within the PTF prior to review of the APA. There are numerous interpretations of what form user scenarios adopt. Within the user experience research (UXR) body of practice, a user scenario is a written narrative related to the use of a service from the perspective of a user or user group. Importantly, the context of use is emphasized as is the desired outcome of use. There are potentially thousands of user scenarios for a technology such as TTS, however, the focus for the PTF is on the core scenarios that relate to the kinds of users who will engage with TTS.

User scenarios, like Personas, represent a composite of real-world experiences. In the case of the PTF, the scenarios were derived from interviews of people who were end-consumers of TTS, as well as submitted narratives and industry examples from practitioners. There are several formats of scenarios. Several are general goal or task-oriented scenarios. Others elaborate on richer context, for example, educational assessment.

The following user scenarios are organized on the three perspectives of TTS use derived from analysis of the qualitative data collected from the discovery work:

End-Consumers of TTS: Encompasses those with a visual disability or other need to have TTS operational when using assistive technologies (ATs).
Digital Content Managers: Addresses activities related to those responsible for producing content that needs to be accessible to ATs and W3C-WAI Guidelines.
Software Engineers: Includes developers and architects required to put TTS into an application or service.

2.1 End-Consumer of TTS

Ultimately, the quality and variation of TTS rendering by assistive technologies vary widely according to a user's context. The following user scenarios reinforce the necessity for accurate pronunciation from the perspective of those who consume digitally generated content.

A. As a traveler who uses assistive technology (AT) with TTS to help navigate through websites, I need to hear arrival and destination codes pronounced accurately so I can select the desired travel itinerary. For example, a user with a visual impairment attempts to book a flight to Ottawa, Canada and so goes to a travel website. The user already knows the airport code and enters "YOW". The site produces the result in a drop-down list as "Ottawa, CA" but the AT does not pronounce the text accurately to help the user make the correct association between their data entry and the list item.
B. As a test taker (tester) with a visual impairment who may use assistive technology to access the test content with speech software, screen reader or refreshable braille device, I want the content to be presented as intended, with accurate pronunciation and articulation, so that my assessment accurately reflects my knowledge of the content.
C. As a student/learner with auditory and cognitive processing issues, it is difficult to distinguish sounds, inflections, and variations in pronunciation as rendered through synthetic voice, such as text-to-speech or screen reader technologies. Consistent and accurate pronunciation whether human-provided, external, or embedded is needed to support working executive processing, auditory processing and memory that facilitates comprehension in literacy and numeracy for learning and for assessments.
D. As an English Learner (EL) or a visually impaired early learner using speech synthesis for reading comprehension that includes decoding words from letters as part of the learning construct (intent of measurement), pronunciation accuracy is vital to successful comprehension, as it allows the learner to distinguish sounds at the sentence, word, syllable, and phoneme level.

2.2 Digital Content Management for TTS

The advent of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for the management and editing of text content has given rise to content creators not requiring technical expertise beyond the ability to operate a text editing application such as Microsoft Word. The following scenario summarizes the general use, accompanied by a hypothetical application.

A. As a content creator, I want to create content that can readily be delivered through assistive technology, can convey the correct meaning, and ensure that screen readers render the right pronunciation based on the surrounding context.
B. As a content producer for a global commercial site that is inclusive, I need to be able to provide accessible culture-specific content for different geographic regions.

2.2.1 Educational Assessment

In the educational assessment field, providing accurate and concise pronunciation for students with auditory accommodations, such as text-to-speech (TTS) or students with screen readers, is vital for ensuring content validity and alignment with the intended construct, which objectively measures a test takers knowledge and skills. For test administrators/educators, pronunciations must be consistent across instruction and assessment in order to avoid test bias or impact effects for students. Some additional requirements for the test administrators, include, but are not limited to, such scenarios:

A. As a test administrator, I want to ensure that students with the read-aloud accommodation, who are using assistive technology or speech synthesis as an alternative to a human reader, have the same speech quality (e.g., intonation, expression, pronunciation, and pace, etc.) as a spoken language.
B. As a math educator, I want to ensure that speech accuracy with mathematical expressions, including numbers, fractions, and operations have accurate pronunciation for those who rely on TTS. Some mathematical expressions require special pronunciations to ensure accurate interpretation while maintaining test validity and construct. Specific examples include:
- Mathematical formulas written in simple text with special formatting should convey the correct meaning of the expression to identify changes from normal text to super- or to sub-script text. For example, without the proper formatting, the equation:a³-b³=(a-b)(a²+ab+b²) may incorrectly render through some technologies and applications as a3-b3=(a-b)(a2+ab+b2).
- Distinctions made in writing are often not made explicit in speech; For example, “fx” may be interpreted as fx, f(x), fx, F X, F X. The distinction depends on the context; requiring the author to provide consistent and accurate semantic markup.
- For math equations with Greek letters, it is important that the speech synthesizer be able to distinguish the phonetic differences between them, whether in the natural language or phonetic equivalents. For example, ε (epsilon) υ (upsilon) φ (phi) χ (chi) ξ(xi).
C. As a test administrator/educator, pronunciations must be consistent across instruction and assessment, in order to avoid test bias and pronunciation effects on performance for students with disabilities (SWD) in comparison to students without disabilities (SWOD). Examples include:
- If a test question is measuring rhyming of words or sounds of words, the speech synthesis should not read aloud the words, but rather spell out the words in the answer options.
- If a test question is measuring spelling and the student needs to consider spelling correctness/incorrectness, the speech synthesis should not read aloud the misspelt words, especially for words, such as:
  - Heteronyms/homographs: same spelling, different pronunciation, different meanings, such as lead (to go in front of) or lead (a metal); wind (to follow a course that is not straight) or wind (a gust of air); bass (low, deep sound) or bass (a type of fish), etc.
  - Homophone: words that sound alike, such as, to/two/too; there/their/they're; pray/prey; etc.
  - Homonyms: multiple meaning words, such as scale (measure) or scale (climb, mount); fair (reasonable) or fair (carnival); suit (outfit) or suit (harmonize); etc.

2.2.2 Academic and Linguistic Practitioners

The extension of content management in TTS is one as a means of encoding and preserving spoken text for academic analyses; irrespective of discipline, subject domain, or research methodology.

A. As a linguist, I want to represent all the pronunciation variations of a given word in any language, for future analyses.
B. As a speech language pathologist or speech therapists, I want TTS functionality to include components of speech and language that include dialectal and individual differences in pronunciation; identify differences in intonation, syntax, and semantics, and; allow for enhanced comprehension, language processing and support phonological awareness.

2.3 Software Application Development

Technical standards for software development assist organizations and individuals to provide accessible experiences for users with disabilities. The final user scenarios in this document are considered from the perspective of those who design and develop software.

A. As a Product Owner for a web content management system (CMS), I want the next software product release to have the capability of pronouncing speech "just like Alexa can".
B. As a client-side user interface developer, I need a way to render text content, so it is spoken accurately with assistive technologies.

Pronunciation User Scenarios

W3C First Public Working Draft 05 September 2019