How Speech Technologies Can Level the Playing Field
Among the challenges physically challenged people can have with websites is the inability to recognize links (due to color blindness); captioning that “breaks” layouts when the user changes the font size; and problems with contrast. R2i works with companies to ensure their sites offer different options to meet the needs of the physically challenged.
Similarly, though Google Voice and similar technologies enable consumers to conduct website searches, these basic voice technologies have limited capability, according to Dustin Coates, voice search lead at Algolia.
While someone who is visually impaired can use basic voice search to, say, find an appliance supplier and perhaps even certain appliances, like a refrigerator, the basic voice search technology can’t drill down to specific features (e.g., refrigerators with freezers on top), Coates says.
Algolia’s technology is designed for visually impaired and other users to describe what they are looking for by enabling them to use detailed descriptions in their searches. Or, in the case of WW (formerly Weight Watchers), customers track their diet throughout the day by searching for food by voice and getting personalized results back.
Faster Closed Captioning
Access to multimedia content is a challenge for many who are physically challenged, says Mudar Yaghi, cofounder and CEO of AppTek, which is working with Gallaudet University and the Rochester Institute of Technology on a program to improve closed captioning.
With offline content, closed captioning is relatively easy, according to Yaghi, but the increasing popularity of streaming makes this much more challenging: “Timing is everything. You don’t want latency. You don’t want to be omitting words.”
Similarly, hand gestures for signing have to keep up with the speaker in the video.
The answer is to use neural networks, bidirectional memory, and machine learning in addition to natural language processing.
Better Connected Speech Therapy
Speech therapy is nothing new, but now “telepractices” are making it available to more people than ever before, says Orna Kemper-Azulay, president and CEO of RemoteSpeech, which provides a platform to connect speech therapists and their patients via remote video.
Since the service debuted four years ago, the signal-to-noise ratio has improved, as has its connectivity, thanks to improved underlying technology producing better connection speeds, meaning fewer incidents of interruptions and freezing videos, according to Kemper-Azulay.
Users and therapists download the platform, called Zoom, and schedule sessions. Therapists can share videos to track progress or simply share notes on a patient who may be seeing someone other than his or her primary therapist.
Though the primary usage of the technology is for students, it is increasingly being used by people who have been in accidents, have had strokes, or have suffered from other physical ailments that have compromised their speech, Kemper-Azulay says.
The technology’s capabilities are particularly important for those in rural or other areas where it is difficult to get to traditional speech therapy sessions, as well as for those with limited mobility, according to Kemper-Azulay. Similarly, RemoteSpeech, a subsidiary of Abington Speech Pathology Services, enables users to have therapy in the comfort of their own home, rather than taking the time to travel to a practitioner’s office.
For those with hearing as well as speech difficulties, the platform offers sign language and assistive hearing devices.
The platform includes elements of gamification to reward users for completing certain tasks.
Not only have advancements in speech technologies helped level the playing field for people with a wide range of challenges, it seems that the democratization of technology as a whole is helping make the solutions that do exist more widely accessible. This will only continue as new developers—and tinkerers—create not only new solutions but new ways of making them available to a wider circle of people.
Phillip Britt is a freelance writer based in the Chicago area. He can be reached at spenterprises@wowway.com.
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