7. Pros and cons of using sound

Spoken Sound / Voice
Pros	Cons
Can convey information to people who might have poor literacy skills	Strong accents can make it difficult to understand what someone is saying.
Can convey a large amount of information fairly quickly	Need to be able to understand the language in order to understand what is being said
Can free you up to concentrate on something else e.g. Sat Nav instructions allow you to concentrate on the road	People with poor hearing might not be able to access the information
Can convey information to many people at once	Some public speaker systems are muffled and difficult to understand
Don't need to actually see somebody to be able to hear them	Might be too much background noise to hear the information correctly

Sound Signals
Pros	Cons
Can convey information and warnings very quickly e.g. a fire bell	Need to know what the sound signal represents in order to understand the information/message
Sounds are accessible and understandable by people no matter what language they speak	People with poor hearing might not be able to access the information
Can convey information to many people at once	Can be distracting especially if people are trying to concentrate
Humans are sensitive to sound and will often pick information conveyed by sound above other methods