The Speech Accessibility Project, backed by tech giants such as Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft, and led by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, is actively recruiting American and Puerto Rican adults with Parkinson’s disease, cerebral palsy (CP) , Down syndrome, ALS and Stroke or Aphasia. This initiative aims to improve voice recognition technologies for people with diverse speech patterns and disabilities. UIUC Beckman Institute researchers securely record participants’ speech samples, ensuring privacy is protected. The project has already provided more than 100,000 speech samples to the large technology companies involved.
People with cerebral palsy, like Spencer Hadbavny, face challenges using technology due to mobility limitations and speech problems. The Speech Accessibility Project offers you the opportunity to actively contribute to the development of more inclusive speech recognition technology. Your participation helps collect valuable data that can be used to improve communication technologies for people with cerebral palsy. Clarion Mendes, assistant clinical professor and member of the project team, highlights the importance of including CP in the project, emphasizing how it can improve quality of life by alleviating communication barriers.
The roots of the project date back to 2008, with the creation of the UA-Speech corpus, a database of voice recordings of people with disabilities in Champaign-Urbana, led by Mark Hasegawa-Johnson. This database became a benchmark in the field of research on dysarthria, a condition frequently associated with cerebral palsy that affects the clarity of speech. The Speech Accessibility Project is now expanding to a broader demographic, including participants from several US states and Puerto Rico. Participants are compensated for their contributions and the overall goal is to ensure that future speech applications are well familiar with the speech patterns of people with cerebral palsy, thereby improving accessibility and usability.
Go to Speech Accessibility Project website to register.
Fountain: Speech Accessibility Project, News
chatGPT, a potential tool for greater accessibility, was used to assist in the writing of this blog post. Do you think this is an appropriate use of chatGPT? Why or why not? Let me know!
