Federal Support for the Development of Speech Synthesis Technologies: A Case Study of the Kurzweil Reading Machine.

This case study situates an early text-to-speech computer developed for blind persons, the Kurzweil Reading Machine (KRM), within a broader history of speech synthesis technologies. Though typically no more than a footnote in the technical history of speech synthesis, the KRM was still a powerful sy...

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Publicado en:Information & Culture Vol. 58; no. 1; pp. 39 - 66
Autor principal: Bell, Sarah A.
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: University of Texas Press 2023
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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        Speech synthesis
        Federal aid
        Reading
        Machinery
        Assistive technology
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          Speech synthesis
          Federal aid
          Reading
          Machinery
          Assistive technology
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        assistive technologies
        reading machines
        speech synthesis
        text to speech
      ab: This case study situates an early text-to-speech computer developed for blind persons, the Kurzweil Reading Machine (KRM), within a broader history of speech synthesis technologies. Though typically no more than a footnote in the technical history of speech synthesis, the KRM was still a powerful symbol of innovation that reveals how disability can be used as a pretext for funding technology development. I argue that various boosters held the KRM up as a symbol of technological solutionism that promised to fully enroll blind people into the US political economy. However, the success of the KRM as a symbol belies its technical flaws, the federal subsidies needed to bring it to fruition, and the structural barriers to its use that were elided by its utopian promise.
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