Speech Accessibility Project
Description
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) has begun the Speech Accessibility Project, a research initiative to make voice recognition technology more accessible and inclusive for people with a range of diverse speech patterns and disabilities. The project has been developed by a team of experts in linguistics, speech, artificial intelligence, security, and privacy, and has support from Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, as well as nonprofit organizations such as Davis Phinney Foundation and Team Gleason.
The initiative will involve collecting speech samples from individuals with diverse speech patterns, creating a private, de-identified dataset to train machine learning models to understand a variety of speech patterns, and providing the technology companies with the necessary infrastructure to make speech recognition more inclusive.
UIUC has a long history of working towards greater accessibility, having been the first post-secondary institution to provide a support service program enabling students with disabilities to attend, and having pioneered architectural accessibility standards. The Beckman Institute, an interdisciplinary research institute on the UIUC campus, is home to researchers tackling topics like intelligence, molecules, and imaging.
By working together, the Speech Accessibility Project and its partner organizations hope to make speech recognition technology available to everyone and eliminate communication barriers for those in the disability community. Through research and development, the project aims to create a more inclusive and equitable world.
Website(s)
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology | Speech Accessibility Project
For More Information Contact
Bibliography
University of Illinois joins five technology industry leaders in new Speech Accessibility Project. (n.d.). Speech Accessiblity Project. Retrieved January 28, 2023, from https://speechaccessibilityproject.beckman.illinois.edu/article/2022/10/03/university-of-illinois-joins-five-technology-industry-leaders-in-new-speech-accessibility-project