Tuesday, October 4, 2022

Tech Giants Unite For Speech Accessibility Project To Better Voice Recognition For Disabled Communities

Tech giants like Google, Meta, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft have joined hands for a new Speech Accessibility project.

The goal is to enhance the concept of voice recognition for those communities that are disabled. The deal is a partnership with the University of Illinois and so far, the design and outline look awfully promising.

See, the aim is to enhance the quality of voice recognition so that it can be used as a diverse form of speech that not even the best AI algorithms could detect in the past.

The goal is to target those patients suffering from Parkinson’s, Downs, Lou Gehrig’s, and any other ailments that take a toll on a patient’s speech.


One professor from the university went on to add how speech usually interferes with a lot of things and that’s why speech interfaces need to be promoted and worked on. This way, it can positively impact the quality of life for such debilitating conditions.

Yes, this task is very difficult as it requires plenty of support and infrastructure. And only those that have the best and most modern forms of technology can get it done. Therefore, an interdisciplinary team with experts arising in the field of AI, privacy, security, and linguistics have been included.

The whole idea is to include people that are suffering from serious conditions. Hence, the project will be collecting samples to ensure a diversity of speech patterns is seen.

The University of Illinois will be recruiting several volunteers that are going to be paid. They will be contributing several voice samples to create a private collection of data. This is used to train various models of machine learning. At the start of the project, the focus is on American English.

Other than these tech giants, there are a few other non-profit organizations that are putting out support for this new project. Remember, Parkinson’s really affects the brain’s motor system and it makes it awfully hard to type and speak. Hence, speech recognition could be used as an integral tool that is used for communication.

This includes the likes of Davis Phinney and Team Gleason who are working out for causes like Parkinson's Disease and ALS. As they stated, the goal was to make sure people live their best lives. And enhancing their speech can really make a difference.

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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

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