Speech Accessibility Project Now Sharing Data To Help Organizations Enhance Automatic Speech Recognition
The Speech Accessibility Project, led by Mark Hasegawa-Johnson of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, is making significant progress in improving speech recognition technology for people with speech differences, especially those with Parkinson’s. The project, backed by tech giants including Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft, has begun sharing voice recordings and related data from 211 Parkinson’s patients with universities, nonprofits and companies. To access this data, interested parties must submit a one-page proposal and sign a data use agreementwhich includes the original speech prompts, participants’ responses, and, in some cases, detailed notes on speech characteristics.
This initiative aims to improve automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems by training them to understand various speech patterns found in people with various disabilities, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, Parkinson’s disease, and survivors of cerebrovascular accidents. The project not only requires that users of the data not distribute or misuse the data, but also encourages them to publish their results and acknowledge the Speech Accessibility Project in their publications. Hasegawa-Johnson’s vision is to leverage these data sets to significantly improve the accessibility of speech technology, making a measurable difference in the lives of those affected by these conditions.
Background:
This project, which has its roots in the 2008 UA-Speech corpus, seeks to improve accessibility for people with conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, cerebral palsy (CP), Down syndrome, ALS, and those affected by stroke. By recording speech samples from participants across the United States and Puerto Rico at UIUC’s Beckman Institute, the project ensures data privacy and security while collecting essential information to improve communications technologies. This effort not only supports the inclusion of people with speech disabilities, but also seeks to make technological interactions more fluid and accessible, thereby improving the quality of life for many.
Fountain: Speech Accessibility Project
chatGPT, a potential tool for greater accessibility, was used as a research and writing aid for this blog post. Do you think this is an appropriate use of chatGPT? Why or why not? Let me know!
