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DIN Standards Committee Ergonomics

Overview

Today, people conduct their daily lives along with spoken announcements from various products such as home electrical appliances, information and telecommunication products, office-automation equipment, heating equipment, toys, sanitary equipment, and health care products. Some products use spoken announcements to provide instructions in indoor and outdoor public areas such as ticket vending machines, elevators, and escalators. Public address systems are often installed to provide spoken announcements. Such announcements can be indistinct to listeners because of hearing loss that can occur with ageing or because of ambient noise in the surroundings. This International Standard specifies methods to determine an appropriate sound pressure level range for spoken announcements in environments where ambient noise is less than 80 dB. The specified methods follow the concepts of ISO/IEC Guide 71 and include consideration of older persons with decreased hearing ability to determine sound pressure levels of spoken announcements. The spoken speech levels that are specified in this International Standard are for products and public-address systems. To improve the accessibility and usability of products, spoken announcements must not only be audible but also presented at comfortable speech levels. The target products that present spoken announcements are consumer products such as electronic home appliances, information and communication technology services, and products providing services for general users in public facilities indoors and outdoors such as train stations, airports, meeting rooms, amusement parks, and fairs. DIN EN ISO 24504 not applicable to products providing private information such as automated teller machines in public spaces. This International Standard is applicable when a loudspeaker producing a spoken announcement is located a short distance from the user in an environment where the sound pressure level with a standard frequency weighting A of ambient noise does not exceed 80 dB. This International Standard is applicable to spoken announcements that are audible to persons with normal hearing for their age when presented by a target product under quiet and anechoic conditions. DIN EN ISO 24504 is applicable for both recorded voice and synthetic speech announcements. This International Standard does not specify sound pressure levels of spoken announcements for systems with automatic sound pressure level control to compensate for fluctuating ambient noise levels. This International Standard is not applicable to spoken announcements heard through headphones or earphones, or to spoken announcements heard with the ear close to the speech sound source, such as in ear speakers specified in IEC 60268-7. This International Standard considers only the audibility of speech and not the process of speech understanding. It does not specify the sound pressure levels of spoken announcements presented in emergency situations such as signals for fire alarms, gas leakage, and crime prevention; those are covered in ISO 7240-16 and ISO 7240-19. This International Standard does not specify the sound pressure levels of spoken announcements in automobiles; those are covered in ISO 15006. The text of ISO 24504:2014 has been prepared by Technical Committee ISO/TC 159 "Ergonomics", Subcommittee SC 5, "Ergonomics of the physical environment" of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and taken over as EN ISO 24504:2016 by Technical Committee CEN/TC 122 "Ergonomics", the secretariat of which is held by DIN (Germany). The committee responsible for this standard is NA 023-00-02 GA "Gemeinschaftsarbeitsausschuss NAErg/NIA: Grundlagen zur barrierefreien Gestaltung/Accessibility" ("Joint Working Committee NAErg/NIA: Basics for barrier-free design/accessibility") at DIN Standards Committee NA 023 Ergonomics.

Document: references other documents

Responsible national committee

NA 023-00-02 GA - Joint working committee of Ergonomics Standards Committee/Information Technology and selected IT Applications Standards Committee/German Commission for Electrical, Electronic & Information Technologies: Accessible design/Accessibility  

Responsible european committee

CEN/TC 122/WG 11 - Ergonomics of the Physical Environment  

Responsible international committee

ISO/TC 159/SC 5 - Ergonomics of the physical environment