May/June 2005

Magazine Features

Saying "Aloha" to Our Hawaiian Customers

Aloha! That's the familiar greeting Hawaiians use to say hello and goodbye, and to express affection, compassion and sympathy. Yet beyond those definitions, "aloha" extends a sense of warmth and welcome that is uniquely Hawaiian. At American Savings Bank, we live the philosophy expressed by aloha. So when we planned a speech-based system to offer customers easier and more convenient services, we wanted to speak with a ...

Speaking of the Internet – Speech Equals Access for All

When the U.S. Congress re-wrote the Americans with Disabilities Act to ensure equal accessibility to technology by those who are visually or physically impaired, the legislation (known as Section 508 - see sidebar) potentially benefited many more people than those with disabilities. Boiled down, Section 508 states that it's illegal for a service provider to discriminate against a disabled person by refusing to provide any service which it provides to members of the public. Personal…

Speech Technologies Make Video Games Complete

Speech recognition technology has reached a significant milestone: its use in mainstream console-based video games. That might seem like a dubious achievement considering the serious ROIs that speech recognition offers for large corporations in automated call centers, but the video game industry is huge, bigger than the movie industry. The costs to produce a new video game make the introduction of any new feature like speech recognition a serious risk. And for speech technology the…

Vendor Directory of Assistive Technology

A-C ALVA Access Group436 14th Street, Suite 700Oakland, CA 94612Tel: 888-318-2582info@aagi.comwww.aagi.com ATIA – Assistive Technology Industry Association401 N. Michigan AvenueChicago, IL 60611-4267 Tel: 877-OUR-ATIA (687-2842)Tel: 312-321-5172Fax: 312-673-6659Info@ATIA.org www.atia.org Avaya, Inc.211 Mt. Airy RoadBasking Ridge, NJ 07920Tel: 866-GO-AVAYAwww.avaya.com AVSI--Automated Voice Systems, Inc.17059 El Cajon AvenueYorba Linda, CA. 92686Tel: 714-524-4488Fax: 714-996-1127mastervoice@mail.comwww.mastervoice.com Closing the GapComputer Technology in Special Education and Rehabilitation…

Virtual Assistants & Mobile Phones: How Speech Makes the Merger

Within the next decade, true interactive speech is expected to be pervasive and in everything. Digital cameras, air conditioners, watches, televisions, PCs, printers, mobile phones, cash registers, kiosks, automobiles, and vending machines will all have voices to announce their status and function. Not only will they accept spoken commands, they will hold conversations with us. Your TIVO will discuss its programming, your car will tell you where to turn, and your mobile phone will remind…

Deployments

History Calls: Delivering Automated Audio Tours to Mobile Phones

Automated audio tours are a popular resource at many cultural heritage sites around the world. This application was first introduced more than two decades ago using personal audio cassette players. These "personal" tours allowed museum visitors to enjoy exhibits more privately, without a human guide or docent, and let them move along at their own pace. Typically a patron would rent a player for a fee and then follow a prescribed route through the museum…

Forward Thinking

Speech in the Warehouse

ASR solutions for the warehouse have been available since the 1980s. Yet, when I attended ProMat, the premier warehousing conference, I found that only two of the 700-plus ProMat exhibitors specialize in automatic speech recognition (ASR) solutions: Vocollect and Voxware.

Synthetic Interviews: Beyond History Calls

Matt Nickerson describes how mobile phones enable callers to speak and listen to virtual agents. Using the same device to speak with family, friends and business associates, callers speak with software agents that enable synthetic interviews with individuals in photographs of historical events in a museum. This represents a new way of interacting with objects that are usually only viewed.

Human Factor

Speech Recognition in Education: Unexploited Opportunities

Approximately 98 Percent-plus Accuracy? Most everybody in the speech industry has heard vendor claims of 95-98 percent-plus speech recognition accuracy. These claims, if slightly qualified, are undeniably true. In fact, using a good quality microphone in a quiet test environment, I have repeatedly obtained 100 percent speech recognition accuracy with several of the major ASR engines.

Industry View

Spread the Word

If the combination of SpeechTEK, TVUI and SAXPO has any common denominator, it is this: We have made great strides in educating ourselves about the power of standards and the Internet in making 'insanely great' self-service, telephone-based applications.

Voice Value

Innovations: Speech Technology with Impact

From the editor: Welcome to Innovations - Speech Technology with Impact. Normally in each issue we have a section for notable press releases, but over time this has grown redundant with our Speech Technology Magazine NewsBlasts. So starting this month we are replacing press releases with a new column on innovations or speech technology with impact.

Speech Technology May Be the Key

According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than 2.6 million U.S. children ages 6 to 11 had learning disabilities or attention or hyperactivity disorders in 1997-1998, and the numbers continue to increase.