Assistive technologies can in many ways facilitate the normal day-to-day lives of the disabled. As part of the ongoing research on assistive technologies at UTAS, Oman, that deals with augmenting and finding multimodal aspects of applications for the disabled, this paper aspires to investigate the role of deep learning in the field of image…

Large-scale, classroom-based experiments using adaptive instructional software pose somewhat unique challenges for experimental design and deployment. One reason for this is that adaptive software allows students to advance through the curriculum at different rates and encounter content at different times, meaning that content targeted for…

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to determine the effect of hearing aid technology level on listener outcome measures. In addition, we aimed to determine if individual characteristics such as noise acceptance and the demands of the listening environment impacted performance and preference. Method: A repeated-measures, single-blinded research…

Students with blindness and low vision (BLV) are less likely to choose mathematics as a subject in the senior secondary years which may negatively impact future employment opportunities. Using a longitudinal qualitative methodology, three interviews were recorded with a student who is legally blind over a six-year period. Findings suggest that…

The objective of this research was to develop interactive multimedia for teaching speaking descriptive text to tenth-grader students of the culinary program. This research was conducted by using the research and development (R & D) approach adapted and modified from Borg and Gall. The procedures were conducting needs analysis, designing the…

Cochlear implants (CIs) have revolutionized the field of audiology, providing a life-changing solution for children with bilateral profound hearing loss. Expanding criteria has allowed children with significant unilateral hearing loss (UHL) to benefit from this technology as well. The practice is not without controversy, however. While we have…

Speech technology (automated speech recognition -- ASR and text-to-speech) offers great promise in the field of automated literacy and reading tutors for children. Students in third and fourth grades struggle with generating longer strings of text on a QWERTY keyboard because they still "hunt and peck" for AQ1 the letters and symbols…

Twenty students who earned A or B course-grades in the proof unit(s) of a secondary course that addressed proof in geometry were asked to work on two proof tasks while sharing their thinking aloud and using smartpens. Students were classified into two categories: those who were successful with both proofs and those who were unsuccessful with both…

This paper investigates whether voice assistants can play a useful role in the specialized work-life of the knowledge worker (in a biology lab). It is motivated both by promising advances in voice-input technology, and a long-standing vision in the community to augment scientific processes with voice-based agents. Through a reflection on our…

When a smart device talks, what should its voice sound like? Voice-enabled devices are becoming a ubiquitous presence in our everyday lives. Simultaneously, speech synthesis technology is rapidly improving, making it possible to generate increasingly varied and realistic computerized voices. Despite the flexibility and richness of expression that…

The English for Academic Purposes (EAP) Toolkit provides a wide range of online learning resources which are used in a mixture of self-study, blended, and classroom settings, primarily by students whose first language is not English. The Toolkit was developed by the eLanguages team at the University of Southampton and first licensed in 2004. This…

To efficiently create books and other instructional content from videos and further improve accessibility of our course content we needed to solve the scene detection (SD) problem for engineering educational content. We present the pedagogical applications of extracting video images for the purposes of digital book generation and other shareable…

Text-To-Speech synthesizers (TTS) have raised the interest of researchers and teachers for their ability to enhance foreign/second language (L2) learning, particularly with regards to the development of pronunciation skills (Liakin, Cardoso, & Liakina, 2017). Despite some optimistic results, there are no studies that investigate TTS's…

Technological devices help extending a person's sensory experience of the environment. From sensors to cameras, devices currently use embedded systems that can be used for the main goal they were designed but they can also be used for other objectives without additional costs of material or service subscription. Emotional assessment is a useful…

The current study compared five free Text-To-Speech (TTS) systems, selected based on characteristics such as availability and capabilities. Tasks were completed by 37 English learners to evaluate these systems in terms of their comprehensibility, naturalness, and intelligibility. Our findings indicate that IBM Watson and Google Translate are the…