Spoken Mathematics Using Prosody, Earcons and Spearcons

Printed notation provides a highly succinct and unambiguous description of the structure of mathematical formulae in a manner which is difficult to replicate for the visually impaired. A number of different approaches to the verbal presentation of mathematical material have been explored, however, the fundamental differences between the two modalities of vision and audition are often ignored. This use of additional lexical cues, spatial audio or complex hierarchies of non-speech sounds to represent the structure and scope of equations may be cognitively demanding to process, and this can detract from the perception of the mathematical content. In this paper, a new methodology is proposed which uses the prosodic component found in spoken language, in conjunction with a limited set of spatialized earcons and spearcons, to disambiguate the structure of mathematical formulae. This system can potentially represent this information in an intuitive and unambiguous manner which takes advantage of the specific strengths and capabilities of audition.