A. C. Downton
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Publications by A. C. Downton (bibliography)
» 1986 «
Dudley, R. P., Downton, A. C. and King, R. W. (1986): Technical Aspects of Television Subtitling in the Education of the Deaf. In Behaviour and Information Technology, 5 (3) pp. 237-248
“This paper describes the research and development which has led to the design of a modular low-cost, high-quality subtitling system based predominantly upon widely available consumer components and intended to produce open or closed captions on standard video cassette recorders. The only non-standard components of the system are a special-purpose video display mixer for combining text and picture information, and a suite of software which fully supports the subtitle preparation process. The software is menu-based for use by inexperienced users and allows any user who can type to produce high-quality teletext format subtitles. The display mixer can be upgraded to provide facilities for downloading broadcast subtitles, teletext pages and telesoftware. Four prototype units have been built and have undergone extensive evaluation in schools for the deaf and partially hearing units. Feedback from the evaluation has resulted in a finalized design which should be available commercially in 1986.”
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Leedham, C. G. and Downton, A. C. (1986): On-Line Recognition of Pitman's Handwritten Shorthand -- An Evaluation of Potential. In International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 24 (4) pp. 375-393
“This paper describes a number of evaluation experiments designed to establish the potential of Pitman's handwritten shorthand as an input for computer transcription to text. Such a system would have applications in verbatim reporting, the electronic office, and as an aid for the deaf. The experiments described compare the performance of a proposed computer transcription system for shorthand (described previously in this journal) with the benchmark performance obtained using human transcription. In addition, measurements on typical Pitman shorthand data are used to estimate potential performance limits. It is concluded that the poor overall performance of the proposed computer transcription system is due to a combination of three factors: first, the simplified nature of the recognition algorithms used compared with the knowledge-based techniques used by human shorthand readers; secondly, ergonomic deficiencies of the data input devices used; and finally, writer's lack of familiarity with the system and its capabilities. A proposed strategy for improving the performance of the system by attention to the first two of these deficiencies is given.”
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» 1984 «
Leedham, C. G., Downton, A. C., Brooks, C. P. and Newell, Allen (1984): On-Line Acquisition of Pitman's Handwritten Shorthand as a Means of Rapid Data Entry. In: Shackel, Brian (ed.) INTERACT 84 - 1st IFIP International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction September 4-7, 1984, London, UK. pp. 145-150.
“In this paper we discuss the use of Pitmans shorthand as a means of converting dictation speed speech (up to 120 wpm) directly into readable text for computer entry or direct output. The Pitman shorthand notation is compared to a machinography or machine compatible script and the recognition problems associated with handwritten shorthand are discussed. The requirements of a writing tablet and instrumented pen for on-line acquisition of Pitman shorthand are described and the preprocessing techniques which have been usefully applied to the raw data are outlined.”
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Downton, A. C. and Brooks, C. P. (1984): Automated Machine Shorthand Transcription in Commercial Applications. In: Shackel, Brian (ed.) INTERACT 84 - 1st IFIP International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction September 4-7, 1984, London, UK. pp. 151-156.
“This paper describes the development and evaluation of a Palantype machine shorthand transcription system for court reporting and commercial applications. The system is based upon a transcription computer which provides special purpose software for transcription from Palantype to English, for efficient editing of transcripts, and for maintaining and optimising the Palantype to English dictionary. The design of the user interface to the system and the dictionary structure are described in detail, to illustrate how these aspects influence the overall efficiency and commercial viability of the system.”
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» 1983 «
Downton, A. C., Baker, R. G., Lewis, S. M. and Cooper, P. J. (1983): Readability Measurements of Palantype Transcription for the Deaf. In International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 19 (6) pp. 575-594
“This paper describes an experiment designed to compare the readability of normal English orthography with that of text produced by a Palantype transcription system designed as an aid for the severely and profoundly deaf. The Palantype transcription system has been described in detail in an earlier paper in this Journal. To provide guidance for future development work, two artificially produced enhancements of the transcription system are also compared with the normal transcription system output and with English orthography. The experimental subjects are members of local deaf and hard of hearing clubs. The experiment is based upon the Cloze technique: words are deleted from the original text and subjects are asked to replace these missing words. Standard texts, normally used for measuring reading ability, form the experimental material. The experiment uses a modified Latin squares design. Statistical analysis of the results shows that there are significant differences between the different text treatments, and some attempt is made to quantify these differences in terms of measures of reading ability commonly used in the educational field.”
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» 1979 «
Downton, A. C. and Newell, Alan F. (1979): An Assessment of Palantype Transcription as an Aid for the Deaf. In International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 11 (6) pp. 667-680
“This paper discusses the development of a simultaneous speech transcription system for the deaf based upon a Palantype shorthand machine. An initial investigation of such a system presented in an earlier paper is summarized and development stemming from this work is detailed. The design considerations of 2 hard-wired logical transcription systems are discussed and the results of trials of these systems with deaf subjects under practical conditions presented. Methods of improving the output text quality by the application of dictionary search techniques are also discussed. The results of emulations of several possible systems using limited dictionaries are presented and compared with the results obtainable using a very large dictionary. The text quality produced by these emulations is illustrated by transcripts of each emulation produced from a single recording of a text from Hansard. Finally, design criteria for a portable and relatively inexpensive microprocessor-based transcription system which would provide a good quality transcript are specified.”
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Mar 21st, 2010
Changes to this page (author)
21 Feb 2010: Enabled abstracts to be shown on A. C. Downton's author page.28 Apr 2003: Added the author to the bibliography
