Usability and digital inclusion: standards and guidelines

This article aims at discussing e-government website usability in relation to concerns about digital inclusion. E-government web design should consider all aspects of usability, including those that make it more accessible to all. Traditional concerns of social exclusion are being superseded by fears that lack of digital competence and information literacy may result in dangerous digital exclusion. Usability is considered as a way to address this exclusion and should therefore incorporate inclusion and accessibility guidelines. This article makes an explicit link between usability guidelines and digital inclusion and reports on a survey of local government web presence in Portugal

Women's own voice pitch predicts their preferences for masculinity in men's voices

Previous studies have found that indices of women's attractiveness predict variation in their mate preferences. For example, objective measures of women's attractiveness (waist-hip ratio and other-rated facial attractiveness) are positively related to the strength of their preferences for masculinity in men's faces. Here, we examined whether women's preferences for masculine characteristics in men's voices were related to their own vocal characteristics. We found that women's preferences for men's voices with lowered (i.e., masculinized) pitch versus raised (i.e., feminized) pitch were positively associated with women's own average voice pitch. Because voice pitch is positively correlated with many indices of women's attractiveness, our findings suggest that the attractiveness of the perceiver predicts variation in women's preferences for masculinity in men's voices. Such attractiveness-contingent preferences may be adaptive if attractive women are more likely to be able to attract and/or retain masculine mates than relatively unattractive women are. Interestingly, the attractiveness-contingent masculinity preferences observed in our study appeared to be modulated by the semantic content of the judged speech (positively valenced vs. negatively valenced speech), suggesting that attractiveness-contingent individual differences in masculinity preferences do not necessarily reflect variation in responses to simple physical properties of the stimulus. Copyright 2010, Oxford University Press.

Voice quality and surgical detail in post-laryngectomy tracheoesophageal speakers

The objective of this study is to assess surgical parameters correlating with voice quality after total laryngectomy (TL) by relating voice and speech outcomes of TL speakers to surgical details. Seventy-six tracheoesophageal patients' voice recordings of running speech and sustained vowel were assessed in terms of voice characteristics. Measurements were related to data retrieved from surgical reports and patient records. In standard TL (sTL), harmonics-to-noise ratio was more favorable after primary TL + postoperative RT than after salvage TL. Pause/breathing time increased when RT preceded TL, after extensive base of tongue resection, and after neck dissections. Fundamental frequency (f0) measures were better after neurectomy. Females showed higher minimum f0 and higher second formants. While voice quality differed widely after sTL, gastric pull-ups and non-circumferential pharyngeal reconstructions using (myo-)cutaneous flaps scored worst in voice and speech measures and the two tubed free flaps best. Formant/resonance measures in/a/indicated differences in pharyngeal lumen properties and cranio-caudal place of the neoglottic bar between pharyngeal reconstructions, and indicate that narrower pharynges and/or more superiorly located neoglottic bars bring with them favorable voice quality. Ranges in functional outcome after TL in the present data, and the effects of treatment and surgical variables such as radiotherapy, neurectomy, neck dissection, and differences between partial or circumferential reconstructions on different aspects of voice and speech underline the importance of these variables for voice quality. Using running speech, next to sustained/a/, renders more reliable results. More balanced data, and better detail in surgical reporting will improve our knowledge on voice quality after TL