Boris: a Spoken Conversational Agent for Music Production for People with Motor Disabilities

Abstract

Previous studies suggest that engagement in musical activities may enhance well-being and impact social inclusion. However, unfortunately, people with physical disabilities cannot often use musical instruments or music production software due to accessibility issues. We propose Boris, an original conversational agent specific for people with a physical disability, to entertain, stimulate expressiveness, and promote communication. Boris enables (even inexperienced) users to compose songs through hands-free interaction by analyzing their vocalizations to obtain more than just their transcription: the system listens to the user even while humming a song and generates a melody by learning and reproducing their human voice patterns. Indeed, it exploits an artificial musical intelligence that can imitate the typically human cognitive skills to produce music using an advanced technique called abstract melody. CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → Natural language interfaces; • Social and professional topics → People with disabilities.

Towards Children-Centred Trustworthy Conversational Agents

“…• Enhancing accessibility: by enabling children with limited writing abilities (including toddlers), dyslexia or physical disabilities to interact with computers [36,37].…”