Zitationsvorschlag
Lizenz (Kapitel)

Dieses Werk steht unter der Lizenz Creative Commons Namensnennung - Weitergabe unter gleichen Bedingungen 4.0 International.
Veröffentlicht
Avatars of digital stories
From Classic to Enriched Audio-Video Constructs
As a collective initiative of research & innovation in the context of the SHIFT: MetamorphoSis of cultural Heritage Into augmented hypermedia assets For enhanced accessibiliTy and inclusion project, financed under HORIZON 2021-2027, the National Association of Public Librarians and Libraries in Romania (ANBPR) and the Augsburg University, Germany (UAU) and audEERING, Germany (AUD) are committed to giving new life to cultural heritage (CH) content in libraries with the support of text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis technologies and natural language processing (NLP) methodologies. This work aims to document and make possible the transformation of classic digital narratives produced by librarians and library service users of pre-existing into accessible, vibrant and emotionally imbued multi-modal constructs that are better received and internalized by to visually impaired or blind people, for whom, otherwise, these cultural constructs would remain a heritage impossible to decipher. This research pathway is nurtured by the dual aspiration of SHIFT partners to enrich CH and support the integration of these groups at risk of exclusion into the wider community of consumers of cultural and creative services. In combating the obstacles faced by the visually impaired in accessing cultural heritage assets, by using TTS technology in conjunction with NLP models for generating synthetic speech, SHIFT partners have tested, validated and refined different voice processing and playback models, resorting to complex semantic analysis tools, as well as elaborate summarization, translation and style transfer techniques. In this way, starting from a large base of digital stories from the ANBPR collection, new, recharged and impactful audio-video compositions were produced, adapted to the cultural and linguistic context of the original storytellers. This paper proposes a perspective centered on the optimized experience of users in relation to CH assets, from the perspective of ANBPR as a use case provider, in the wider context of the SHIFT project implementation. The present paper will analyze the different transformative layers of digital stories and how they become a more accessible and approachable version for visually impaired or blind people. ANBPR and partners took into account, on the one hand, the creative potential of digital stories about the cultural identity of communities, and, on the other hand, the inclusive valences of advanced technological solutions, which ultimately contribute to semantic and emotional decoding of some precious content elements of CH. Using affective speech synthesis, CH artifacts are transmuted into vibrant and engaging narratives that evoke the imagination and create strong emotional connections. Thus, this sense, the pre-existing digital stories get a renewed, revitalized version, full of emotional expressiveness and, more importantly, easily accessible to visually impaired or blind people. This pioneering approach accredits the idea that advanced technological solutions such as TTS, NLP modeling, etc. contributes to the facilitation of inclusion for CH accessibility on a large scale.



