The Karten Network team has recently had a paper published in Assistive Technology, The Official Journal of RESNA. The paper describes the Nuvoic project methodology and how we worked with disabled participants and software developers to improve the functionality and performance of Voiceitt. The Voiceitt app is designed for people with dysarthric speech, to support vocal communication and access to voice-driven technologies. Sixty-six participants were recruited to test the Voiceitt app and share feedback with developers. You can read the full paper here Developing accessible speech technology with users with dysarthric speech
Now into our third and final year of the Nuvoic Project, we’re seeing exciting progress in Voiceitt’s work on automatic speech recognition for atypical speech, and significant developments on their new dictation and captioning tool. Results are at an early stage, but they look promising!
Continuous recognition of atypical speech
Voiceitt’s app already supports people with atypical speech to communicate and control Smart Home technologies more easily, but users currently have to train each phrase in advance. In the next release, Voiceitt aims to offer real-time recognition, allowing people with non-standard speech to have their words transcribed or interpreted, without the need to pre-train every phrase.
To achieve this Voiceitt have launched Project Ensemble, a website where volunteers can donate recordings of atypical speech patterns as training data for Voiceitt’s recognition models. Through Nuvoic, we’ve been recruiting participants, offering support to take part and gift cards as a thank you for all contributions. So far we’ve supported 28 people to join Ensemble, who have uploaded an amazing 15,000 phrases in total – congratulations and thank you to everyone who’s contributed so far! 🤩🎉
Voiceitt are already using these and recordings from other participants around the world to develop a new dictation and captioning tool. In the video below, Michael demonstrates his personal speech model providing live captions through Zoom (Zoom’s built-in captioning doesn’t work for Michael’s speech). Users can also dictate text for use in messages or documents, or to share onscreen with a conversation partner. While this technology is still at an early stage it’s a significant improvement on what’s currently available, and with more recordings will become more accurate over time.
https://youtu.be/9By9qEH0BvI
Live Transcription Demo – Voiceitt integration with Zoom
However, we still need more participants to donate recordings to help develop this technology more quickly and test the results. We want to include as many non-standard voices as possible so please get in touch if you or people you support would like to get involved. We can offer equipment on loan, technical support, gift cards of up to £100 for participants and funding for organisations and individuals supporting someone to take part. If you or your organisation would like to be involved in this exciting development work, please see our web pages or contact our project co-ordinator: liz@karten-network.org.uk for more information.
Feedback from users
As well as their work on continuous recognition, Voiceitt have continued to use feedback from our participants to improve their app. Recent additions include: a button to flag misrecognitions, helping to improve accuracy; the option to repeat spoken output; and more options to use Bluetooth accessories in combination with the internal mic and speaker, to support the use of Voiceitt ‘out and about’ or in noisy environments. All of these features have been requested by users and it’s great to see them now available!
Other Updates
In September we took Ensemble on the road, exhibiting at the Communication Matters conference in Leeds. We had a lot of interest in the project, which we hope will generate some new recruits!
We would love to hear from you if you, or someone you know may be interested in taking part in donating speech samples or testing Voiceitt’s technology. Please email our project co-ordinator: liz@karten-network.org.uk, or you can find more information and get in touch via our project web pages.
As we move into our third and final year of the Nuvoic Project, we’re seeing some great feedback from participants with atypical speech about the different ways they’ve been using the Voiceitt speech recognition app, and ideas on how it could be improved. Voiceitt have already implemented some of these ideas and are working on others. In this update, we also have a blog from Haroon Sahir, one of our participants from St Joseph’s in London, about his experience of taking part.
Feedback from users
Over 70 people with atypical speech have now joined the project and shared feedback about using the Voiceitt app to communicate or control Smart Home technology like Alexa, including the following comments:
It’s got easier as it learns my voice
It felt good, it was the first time a speech recognition app understood me
The recognition seems to work much better the more I use it
When it’s noisy it doesn’t work as well and I usually have to repeat a few times
It makes it easier to do some things for myself
It helps me when I want to go out to places and communicate with new people
Symbols for every phrase would be useful
It could be incredibly useful if the recognition works better
The Voiceitt team have used participants’ feedback to improve the app, including making it quicker and easier to train new phrases and adding points and achievements to make it more fun! Most people would like the app to understand their speech without having to train each phrase in advance, and we now have 21 participants donating speech data through Project Ensemble to help with this.
Ensemble
In the latest phase of our project, we’re asking people with atypical speech to record and donate phrases through the Ensemble website, to help Voiceitt improve the way their speech recognition technology works. Thanks to everyone who’s enrolled so far. Between them, they’ve donated over 7,000 recordings so far – a brilliant start!
We’re keen to include as many non-standard voices as possible so please get in touch if you or people you support want to add theirs to the Ensemble! We can offer equipment on loan, technical support, gift cards of up to £100 for participants and funding for organisations supporting someone to take part. If you or your organisation would like to be involved in this exciting development work, please see our web pages or contact our project co-ordinator: liz@karten-network.org.uk for more information.
Other Updates
One of our participants, Haroon Sahir, has written the following piece about his experience of the project, testing the Voiceitt app and donating speech recordings through Voiceitt Ensemble:
It was just about the end of Lockdown when my main carer Leanne came back from her Covid-19 break. Before this I was just having three hours care a week during the ‘dark days of London Lockdown.’ When Leanne returned we were having telephone conversations with staff from the St Joseph’s centre in Hendon, London. We were trying to figure out on how to install Microsoft Teams onto my decade-old adapted I.T. equipment because nearly everyone was doing Zoom calls on their computers, mobiles or iPads and I wasn’t able to do this during lockdowns!’ Staff asked, after they noticed I was having speech impairment problems over the telephone, if I would be interested in taking part in a speech project. I said ‘yes’ and this led to the introduction to Geena, a technologist on the project, via e-mail.
We carried on by using the trusted and my best form of communication, which is email! There were lots of email exchanges between Geena from the Karten Network, St Joseph’s and me before I first met Geena with support from Leanne, travelling by London public bus to the St Joseph centre. That was start of the Voiceitt project for me. We did Zoom calls using Leanne’s mobile, using iPads to do my voice recordings, and Leanne videoed me using my speech recordings on the iPad in the gym and at the centre. During Geena’s home visits we set up my computer with Zoom and a microphone and she interviewed me and videoed me doing the Voiceitt recordings on my computer. Geena is coming again to try to set up our old 37″ TV in my bedroom, so I don’t have to use the awkward old Toshiba television remote control!
The most valuable and interesting thing about working on the Voiceitt project I did some 1729 Voiceitt recordings for Voiceitt Ensemble. When recording on Ensemble I felt I was working on my fourth unofficial internet job and more importantly in my opinion I was doing speech therapy independently without the help from a human speech therapist. In the future Voiceitt could be used as a science fiction version to speech therapy?
The interesting or funny thing was when I was doing the Voiceitt recordings at several night times my 77 year old mother came from her bedroom into my bedroom to see why I was talking to myself! Eventually Voiceitt Ensemble said “It has run out of sentences to record in this dataset”! I was the first person to complete all the phrases. I missed doing the recordings and hearing my speech back through the speaker/microphone which was one of the gadgets provided by the Voiceitt project and ordered by Geena via the internet!
After this was written, the team released new sentences and Haroon has been busy recording again! You can also check out Haroon’s sports writing on Facebook. Many thanks to Haroon for his blog and his fantastic work on the project.
Get in touch!
We would love to hear from you if you, or someone you know may be interested in taking part in testing the Voiceitt app and/or donating speech samples. Please email our project co-ordinator: liz@karten-network.org.uk, or you can find more information and get in touch via our project web pages.
Since our last update we’ve continued recruiting and supporting people with atypical speech to test and give feedback on the Voiceitt speech recognition app, and to donate speech samples to help improve the underlying technology. The app is designed to support communication and Smart Home control for people who have atypical speech, with details available on our project website.
Voiceitt at The Maples smart bungalow
In February, the Karten Nuvoic Project team visited The Maples smart bungalow at Portland College near Mansfield, to help make voice controls for their new Smart Home installation accessible for people with atypical speech, through the Voiceitt app. The team at Portland College were already supporting learners to try out a whole range of new equipment via Alexa, including some who use voice output communication aids (see their article in January’s newsletter for details). Using Voiceitt’s speech recognition app, the Nuvoic team made these commands accessible for people who want to use their own voice but who find that Alexa doesn’t understand their speech.
We setup Voiceitt commands to control lights and blinds in every room, to set the heating and view cameras at the front and back doors, and even show what’s in the fridge! With Voiceitt, users can choose the words they want to use and train the app to recognise their unique pronunciation. The Portland team have setup routines in Alexa to carry out several actions with a single command, which we replicated with Voiceitt. For example, ‘Good morning’ will open the blinds and turn on the lights throughout the bungalow, while ‘Good night’ does the reverse. ‘Let’s chill out’ closes the blinds and sets the lights low in the chill out room, activates a bubble tube via a smart plug and plays relaxing music. We also setup commands to control the Robovac (robot vacuum cleaner), and basic commands for the TVs using voice control through Voiceitt.
Sarah Field is a Learning Support worker at Portland College, and a participant in the Nuvoic Project. Sarah trained Voiceitt to recognise how she says each of these commands and demonstrates them in the following video.
It was a great opportunity to gain experience of using Voiceitt with a fantastic range of Smart Home equipment, which we hope to share with other participants and organisations – please email liz@karten-network.org.uk if you would like more information. Huge thanks to Sarah and the team at Portland College for allowing us to visit and for all your help while we were there!
Ensemble
In the latest phase of our project, we’re asking people with atypical speech to record and donate phrases through the Ensemble website, to help Voiceitt improve the way their speech recognition technology works. Thanks to everyone who’s enrolled so far, through Caritas St Joseph’s, Cedar Foundation, Enable Ireland, The Grange, Homefield College, Leonard Cheshire, Leuchie House and several individual participants too. Between them, they’ve donated over 3,500 recordings so far – a brilliant start!
We’re keen to include as many non-standard voices as possible so please get in touch if you or people you support want to add theirs to the Ensemble! We can offer equipment on loan, technical support, gift cards of up to £100 for participants and funding for organisations supporting someone to take part.
If you or your organisation would like to be involved in this exciting development work, please see our web pages or contact our project co-ordinator: liz@karten-network.org.uk for more information.
Other Updates
In March one of our participants, Daniel Burgess, presented his work on the Nuvoic Project to students at Oakwood Academy in Manchester. Daniel volunteers with Leonard Cheshire as a befriender at their Hill House service in Sandbach, and delivers Zoom karaoke and quizzes to residents. As well as testing Voiceitt and donating voice samples through Voiceitt Ensemble, Daniel also supports two residents at Hill House to take part in the project – thanks Dan for your amazing contribution!
Our Project Technologist, Geena Vabulas, has also recently presented our work with Voiceitt to over 100 Assistive Technology professionals working in HE and FE at the Jisc ‘Focus on the Future’ event. This generated a lot of interest and several new enquiries from organisations wanting to get involved – fantastic job Geena!
Get in touch!
We would love to hear from you if you, or someone you know may be interested in taking part in testing the Voiceitt app and/or donating speech samples. Please email our project co-ordinator: liz@karten-network.org.uk, or you can find more information and get in touch via our project web pages.
The New Year brings some exciting progress as we move into the second half of the Nuvoic Project! As well as participants’ ongoing work to test and give feedback on the Voiceitt speech recognition app, designed to support communication and Smart Home control for people who have atypical speech, we’re now moving into a new phase: voice sampling through Voiceitt Ensemble.
Ensemble
Voiceitt aim to improve the way their app works by collecting more speech samples from people with atypical speech. Currently, users have to teach the app to recognise each phrase or Smart Home command they want to use. In the future, Voiceitt want to offer ‘continuous recognition’, where the app would be able to recognise users’ speech without having to train every phrase in advance. To do this, they need lots more examples of non-standard speech and so we’re looking for volunteers to donate voice samples.
Participants would use Voiceitt’s Ensemble website to work through packs of phrases, making a recording for each one. The project team will support participants to register and work through their first recording session. After that they can carry on independently or with support from the project team or local teams as needed.
We’re offering gift cards of up to £100 to thank participants for their contribution, and we can also offer equipment or reimbursement of staff time to organisations supporting someone to take part. We already have our first few participants enrolled! If you or your organisation would like to be involved in this exciting development work, please contact our project co-ordinator: liz@karten-network.org.uk for more information.
Other Updates
Since our last update we’ve published our fantastic new project video, featuring participants from Enable Ireland, The Grange, Linkage College, Leonard Cheshire and Portland College demonstrating the different ways they’ve chosen to use the Voiceitt app. Thanks so much to everyone who contributed – it gives a great flavour of the project and we hope you’ll like it as much as we do!
Work on testing and feedback continues. We’ve recently welcomed new participants from Leonard Cheshire, New Bridge and St Joseph’s, while others have now come to the end of their testing and contributed valuable feedback to the development team. Huge thanks go to Beaumont College, Cedar Foundation, Enable Ireland, The Grange, Homefield College, National Star and SeeAbility who have all supported participants to complete their testing. We hope to continue working with you on Ensemble!
Now almost 18 months into the Nuvoic Project we’re starting to see some great outcomes, both in terms of participants using the Voiceitt app to do more things more independently, and also some new developments in the user interface and app performance, in response to participants’ feedback.
The project is led by developers Voiceitt and aims to improve access to voice recognition technologies for people who have dysarthric speech. The Karten Network team leads on user testing, supporting people with non-standard speech to try the app for support with communication or Smart Home control, and give feedback on what works well and what could be improved.
Updates
Ashley from The Grange has been using Voiceitt to control lights and listen to Magic Radio
We now have over 60 participants enrolled in the project, and we’re delighted to welcome new participants from Leonard Cheshire, Leuchie House in Scotland and Linkage College who join those already involved from Beaumont College, Caritas St. Joseph’s, Cedar Foundation, Enable Ireland, FitzRoy, The Grange Centre, Homefield College, National Star, New Bridge Horizons, The Oaks College, Portland College, SeeAbility, St John’s College and Young Epilepsy.
As Covid-19 restrictions have eased, more participants have been using Voiceitt to support communication out-and-about: to socialise, order food and drink in a café or to use public transport, for example. (Our team has also been able to get out and visit participants in person, which has been great!) We also have participants trying out a range of different Smart Home controls. Some use voice control to play music, radio or audiobooks via a smart speaker, ask about the news, weather or sports results, or tell jokes. Others are using Voiceitt to control other devices like smart bulbs, plugs, windows, blinds and TVs. Check out our participant videos to see some examples for yourself!
Eleanor from Linkage College uses Voiceitt to control her coloured smart bulb and listen to music on her Echo smart speaker
We keep in touch with participants throughout their testing and pass all feedback on to the developers. We’ve already seen improvements in response to user feedback: it’s now quicker and easier to train new commands, and changes to the user interface to make the app easier to navigate and more fun to use, for example. Switch access and predictive text have also been implemented. Thanks so much to everyone involved for all your fantastic feedback so far, please keep it coming!
Over the next few months, as well as continuing with testing and feedback, we’ll also be starting to recruit participants to donate voice samples through Voiceitt’s ‘Ensemble’ scheme. Voiceitt want to move from ‘discrete recognition’, where users train the app in advance to recognise how they say each phrase or command, to ‘continuous recognition’ of spontaneous speech, and need to collect a lot of new voice data to support this work. While this won’t benefit participants immediately, we can offer vouchers or equipment to participants and support teams who take part. Details to follow soon – watch this space!
Get in touch!
We would love to hear from you if you, or someone you know may be interested in taking part in testing and/or voice sampling. Please email our project co-ordinator: liz@karten-network.org.uk, or you can find more information and get in touch via our project web pages.
May marked the start of our second year working on the Nuvoic Project, our collaboration with developer Voiceitt, which aims to improve access to voice recognition technologies for people who have dysarthric speech. Voiceitt’s app supports people who want to communicate or control Smart Home technologies using their own voice, but who are often misunderstood by unfamiliar people or mainstream speech recognition. The Karten Network is leading on user involvement and testing in the UK and Ireland.
Updates
In April we were delighted to welcome our newest Technologist, Geena Vabulas, to the Nuvoic Project Team. Geena joins us part-time, bringing fantastic experience from her role as Policy Manager for Assistive Technology at Policy Connect, as well as previous experience in qualitative research and provision of support and training in assistive technology. Welcome Geena!
We’ve continued to work with Karten Centres and other organisations to recruit participants, and now have 46 people enrolled! Since our last update we’re pleased to welcome new participants from Caritas St. Joseph’s, Enable Ireland, FitzRoy, Oakley College and Portland College, as well as three new individuals who’ve joined us directly. They join those already involved individually or through Beaumont College, Cedar Foundation, The Grange Centre, Homefield College, Leonard Cheshire, National Star, New Bridge Horizons, SeeAbility, St John’s College and Young Epilepsy.
Testing is going well. We ask participants to choose useful phrases and smart home commands, train the app to recognise their spoken prompts and practise using them, then tell us what they think, including any problems or ideas for improvement. The Alexa and other Smart Home controls are really popular, especially to play music or radio. All users can access favourite artists or genres via Amazon music or Spotify and those with paid accounts can setup commands to access their personal playlists. One participant uses Voiceitt to access audiobooks via Audible and we’re working with two others to setup Voiceitt to access their Kindle accounts. Some people use Voiceitt to ask about the news, weather or sports results, or tell jokes. Some are using Voiceitt to control appliances like a lava lamp or fan via a smart plug, others are trying out smart bulbs and experimenting with different colour controls. One participant has an environmental control system to operate his windows and blinds, and through Nuvoic we’re supporting him to control these via Voiceitt.
We’re getting lots of useful feedback about the app and sharing this with Voiceitt. In May Voiceitt arranged focus groups, including five of our participants, to discuss design ideas for new gaming features like XP points and achievements. These were designed in response to user feedback, to motivate people to train and use the app by making it more fun to use. Several of these new features are now included in the latest update.
To mark Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Voiceitt posted a clip of one of our participants, Mark Wilkinson from Leonard Cheshire, using Voiceitt to ask Alexa to tell a joke – and highlighting the fun side of accessibility! Mark also features in the clip used by Voiceitt to mark their launch on the AppStore this month.
Thanks so much to everyone involved for all your work so far on testing Voiceitt, and all your great feedback!
Get in touch!
We would love to hear from you if you, your organisation or someone you know may be interested in taking part, or if you’d like more information. Please email our project co-ordinator: liz@karten-network.org.uk, or you can find more information and get in touch via our project web pages.
Work continues this year on the Nuvoic Project, our collaboration with specialist app developer Voiceitt which aims to improve access to voice recognition technologies for people who have speech difficulties. Voiceitt’s app supports people who want to communicate or control Smart Home technologies using their own voice, but who have difficulty being understood. The Karten Network is leading on user involvement and testing in the UK.
Updates
We’re delighted to welcome our new Project Technologist, Sean Connolly, to the Nuvoic Project Team! Sean joins us on secondment from his previous role as Training Officer for Cedar Foundation’s Inclusion Works service, bringing his experience of supporting and advising individuals and organisations on the use of assistive technology, as well as a strong interest in smart home technologies. Welcome Sean!
Since our last newsletter, we’ve continued to work with Karten Centres and other partner organisations to recruit people with non-standard speech to test the Voiceitt app, and we’re delighted to welcome participants from FitzRoy, New Bridge Horizons, SeeAbility and St John’s College, as well as others who’ve contacted us directly. They join those already involved individually or through Beaumont College, Cedar Foundation, Enable Ireland, Leonard Cheshire, Homefield College, National Star, The Grange Centre and Young Epilepsy.
We now have participants using Voiceitt to access audiobooks and music, control lights and TVs as well as to support their communication. We’re getting lots of useful feedback about the app, and Voiceitt have recently implemented switch access and predictive text in response to testers’ comments. They’re currently working to support voice and video calls, including Alexa’s Drop-in feature, which we expect to be popular among our testers.
Participants at Hill House (Leonard Cheshire) and The Grange have also contributed video clips where they demonstrate the app and talk about how they use it. These will be combined and published later in the year – watch this space!
Thanks to all our participants and partner organisations for your contribution so far!
Get involved!
We’re still recruiting participants to test the Voiceitt app, especially the new Smart Home features, giving integrated control of an Amazon Echo smart speaker. We’re also looking to recruit people with impaired speech who are willing to donate voice recordings to help develop Voiceitt’s technology.
We’re keen to work with new partner organisations who support people with impaired speech, and we have funding available to reimburse organisations for time spent supporting the project. We can also work directly with individuals, family members and carers to support participation, and we offer vouchers, as well as free use of Voiceitt during participation and for six months afterwards, to thank participants for their contribution. Please see our project web pages for details of what’s involved.
Get in touch!
We would love to hear from you if you, your organisation or someone you know may be interested in taking part, or if you’d like more information. Please email our project co-ordinator: liz@karten-network.org.uk, or you can find more information and get in touch via our project web pages.
The Karten Network has continued working on the Nuvoic Project our collaboration with specialist app developer Voiceitt, aiming to improve access to speech recognition technology for people who have speech difficulties. Voiceitt’s app supports people who want to communicate using their own voice but have difficulty being understood by unfamiliar people, or who want to use their voice for smart home control but can’t access mainstream technologies. The Karten Network is leading on user involvement and testing in the UK.
Updates
Since our last newsletter, we’ve been working with several of our partner organisations to recruit individuals to take part in the project, and we’re delighted that we now have participants from Beaumont College in Lancaster, Cedar Foundation in Northern Ireland, Enable Ireland, Hill House care home in Sandbach (Leonard Cheshire), Homefield College in Leicestershire, National Star in Cheltenham, The Grange Centre and Young Epilepsy in Surrey, as well as some individuals who’ve contacted us directly. We’d like to say a huge thank you to all of our participants and partner organisations for your contribution so far, especially in such challenging circumstances!
In December, Voiceitt announced their collaboration with Amazon to make Alexa accessible for users with impaired speech, and in January were awarded a ‘Best of Innovation’ award in the Accessibility category by the Consumer Technology Association. Congratulations Voiceitt!
We’ve also recently published our new Nuvoic project web pages, check these out for information and updates about the project.
Get involved!
We’re still recruiting participants to test the Voiceitt app, especially the new Smart Home mode which gives integrated control of an Amazon Echo smart speaker. We’re also looking to recruit people with impaired speech who are willing to donate voice recordings to help develop Voiceitt’s technology.
We’re keen to work with new partner organisations who support people with impaired speech, and we have funding available to reimburse organisations for time spent supporting the project. We can also work directly with individuals, family members and carers to support participation, and we offer vouchers, as well as free use of Voiceitt during participation and for six months afterwards, to thank participants for their contribution. Please see our project web pages for details of what’s involved.
Get in touch!
We would love to hear from you if you, your organisation or someone you know may be interested in taking part, or if you’d like more information. Please email our project co-ordinator: liz@karten-network.org.uk, or you can find more information and get in touch via our project web pages.
In our last newsletter we announced our involvement in the Nuvoic Project, a collaboration with specialist app developer Voiceitt, which aims to improve access to speech recognition technology for people who have non-standard or dysarthric speech. Voiceitt are developing an app for people who want to communicate using their own voice but have difficulty being understood by unfamiliar people, or who want to use their voice for smart home control but can’t access mainstream technologies. You can see video clips here of Voiceitt in action for communication and smart home control.
The Karten Network is leading on user involvement and testing in the UK. Since June, we’ve been working hard to produce resources, we’ve received ethical approval for the planned work with participants, and now we’re pleased to announce that recruitment is open and we’re in the process of enrolling our first testers at The Grange Centre in Surrey!
We’re currently looking for people who would like to get involved in testing the app, particularly the new Smart Home feature which gives integrated control of an Amazon Echo smart speaker. We’re looking for people who:
Are aged 16+
Have ‘non-standard’ speech, sometimes not understood by others
Want to use speech to communicate
Are interested in technology
Can use a tablet or phone by touchscreen
Can read in-app instructions
Can understand what’s involved & agree to take part
The app runs on an iPad or iPhone, we can provide testing kit on loan as needed. We will ask participants to choose around 15 commands or phrases which will be useful to them in daily life, to train the app to recognise how they say these and then to practise using them over 3-4 months. At the end of this time we’d like participants to tell us about how easy or difficult they found it to train and use the app, how well it worked for them, what they liked and what could be improved. Participants who complete the feedback interview will receive a £20 app store voucher as a thank you for their time and effort, and a further 6 months’ free use of the Voiceitt app.
As well as working directly with individuals, family members and carers we hope to work with partner organisations such as our Karten Centre hosts and others offering services and support to people with impaired speech. We have funding available to reimburse local support teams for help to recruit and work with participants. We’re delighted that The Grange Centre in Surrey will be taking part and we look forward to working closely with them and other partners in future!
We would love to hear from you if you, your organisation or someone you know may be interested in taking part, or if you would like more information. Please email our project co-ordinator: liz@karten-network.org.uk and look out for our Nuvoic project web pages, available soon, linked from the Karten Network website.
The Karten Network is very pleased to begin work this Summer on the Nuvoic project, which aims to improve access to voice recognition technologies for people who have dysarthric or unclear speech. Our project partner Voiceitt produces a specialist voice recognition app, designed to be used by people who have dysarthric speech and who are unable to use mainstream voice-controlled systems.
We want to recruit participants who would be willing to provide voice samples to extend Voiceitt’s database of English-accented dysarthric speech, which will help improve the performance of their recognition systems. Voiceitt are also working to develop new and existing functions for their apps. Potential uses include voice output, to help users to communicate more easily with people who are unfamiliar with their speech, and control of other voice-driven technologies such as the Amazon Alexa and other smart-home and environmental control systems. There are also plans to develop a voice-controlled online shopping app.
We are looking for participants aged 16 or over to join this exciting project, to test these apps and provide feedback to Voiceitt on how they could be improved. The apps give written instructions to the user, so some literacy is needed. If you would like to get involved with this project or would like to find out more, please contact Liz Howarth who is the project co-ordinator for the Karten Network: liz@karten-network.org.uk.
We would be very grateful for any help from colleagues in our Karten Centres to help us to publicise this project and make contact with any potential participants. The Voiceitt apps currently run on Apple devices but Android versions are planned for the future. Participants using their own iPhone or iPad will benefit most easily but some funding is available to provide testing kit where needed.
Liz Howarth has joined the Karten Network in June as Project Co-ordinator for the Nuvoic project, which aims to improve access to voice-recognition technologies for people who have dysarthric or unclear speech. Liz has recently worked as a health researcher at the University of Manchester, contributing to several trials and evaluation studies, and has previously worked in learning and communication support and assistive technology roles at Beaumont College in Lancaster.
There, she provided technical and learning support to students using voice output communication aids, and through the Wheeltop project worked to improve students’ access to education, entertainment, social networking and environmental controls through development of customised interfaces for portable devices.
Liz is looking forward to working with Karten Centre teams to support participation in the Nuvoic project. This will be an opportunity for people with dysarthric speech who are unable to use mainstream voice recognition systems to get involved in testing and improving more accessible voice control. Potential applications include voice output for communication with others, or to interact with existing voice-driven systems such as the Amazon Alexa and other smart-home devices. For more information see our featured article, or contact liz@karten-network.org.uk.
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