TABLE OF CONTENTS Auditory interfaces are bidirectional, communicative connections between two systems typically a human user and a technical product. The side toward the machine involves machine listening, speech recognition, and dialog systems. The side toward the human uses auditory displays. These can use speech or primarily nonspeech audio to convey information. This chapter will focus on the nonspeech audio used to display information, although in the last section of the chapter, some intriguing previews into possible nonspeech audio receptive interfaces will be presented.
Auditory displays are not new and have been used as alarms, for communication, and as feedback tools for many decades. Indeed, in the mid 1800s an auditory display using Morse code and the telegraph ushered in the field of telecommunications. As technology has improved, it has become easier to create auditory displays. Thus, the use of this technology to present information to users has become commonplace, with applications ranging from computers to crosswalk signals (Brewster, 1994; Massof, 2003). This same improvement in technology has coincidentally increased the need for auditory displays.
Some of the needs that can be met through auditory displays include (1) presenting information to visually impaired people, (2) providing an additional information channel for people whose eyes are busy attending to a different task, (3) alerting people to error or emergency states of a system, and (4) providing information via devices with small screens such as...
