Computer Linguistic Automatic Ticket-Selling System for the Blind: The Perspective of Human-Sense Characteristics

The eye is the window of the soul. Without the input of visual information, the mobility for those with visual disability is much limited compared with people with healthy eyes. Surveys have revealed that approximately 39.2% of the visually disabled people in Taiwan desperately wish to return to the society and that the lack of mobility is one the major causes leading to their inability to live an independent life. Therefore, the provision of an ideal ticket selling system for public transportation catered to the needs of the visually disabled has become one of the most important issues surrounding the discussion about how to help the blind to start participating in the various societal activities as early as possible. According to the principle of the Universal design, this study has developed a train ticket seller system applying computer interactive voice response technology according to the sense characteristics of the visually disabled. The main idea is to allow the blind to interact with the ticket selling system through hearing sense and verbal ability. The increasingly sophisticated computer speech recognition technology also played a pivotal role in the development of the system. Using voice recognition as the input unit of the computer equipment is probably one of the easiest and most convenient methods for the blind. Hence, this study set out to develop a more user-friendly voicecontrolled man-machine interface, with an aim to provide a simple, convenient, and accurate automatic train ticket seller system for the visually disabled, making it possible for the blind to move more freely and independently, thereby facilitating their needs to return to the society as early as possible.