Ye wha’? Class, Gender, Race and Age: Fixing Diversity in Text-to-Speech Accessibility Readers

ended

Title: Ye wha’? Class, Gender, Race and Age: Fixing Diversity in Text-to-Speech Accessibility Readers Abstract: Ye wha’?* is a creative-critical multidisciplinary project researching normative digital voice and developing alternatives. Research into voices used by chatbots, accessibility programs and text-to-speech readers in English-speaking digital technology shows narrow representation in terms of gender, race, age, class, and regional accent, with most voices presenting as young, white, RP (received pronunciation), and middle/upper class. Prompted by research into the negative impacts of underrepresentation, Ye wha’? will use practice-based research to achieve three outcomes. I will develop an open-source web-based text-to-speech reader app using an alternative range of voices in terms of gender, age, class, race and regional accent, for freely available practical and creative use, in collaboration with my industry secondment partner, Promising Trouble/Careful Industries. I will produce a creative-critical monograph furthering the autotheoretical techniques I have successfully employed in previous award-winning projects, delineating my research, considering issues of representation, and reflecting on voice, technology, and self. Drawing on my previous practical and theoretical investigations into the post-medium and hybrid practice, a key aspect of my project will be to develop, extend and evaluate methodologies that draw together creative research, social interventions, and critical writing. Bringing the fields of art, academia, and social practice into conversation via the creation of a presentation that will allow the exhibition of the app and monograph as an art piece in a range of settings (online, galleries, conferences, festivals, and bookshops) will create a positive interdisciplinary feedback loop as well as ensuring that my project has high cultural, social and academic impact. * Ye Wha’? is an Irish/Dublin colloquialism: “you [said/did] what?