As the Nuvoic Project draws to a close this month we review the fantastic contributions and progress made towards universally accessible speech recognition. We would like to say congratulations and a HUGE thank you to all our participants, their families and support teams in our fantastic partner organisations. Your contributions and support have been amazing and we’re incredibly proud of what we’ve achieved together over the past three years.
This short slideshow features all those participants who gave permission to share photos, plus some of the events we’ve attended as a team.
See if you can spot someone you know! For more details and videos please see our project website.
Nuvoic was a three-year project led by developers Voiceitt, with the Karten Network leading on user involvement. In phase 1, we asked participants to test and give feedback on the original Voiceitt app, designed to help people with atypical speech to communicate and control Smart Home technology using their own voice. Seventy-eight people took part, trying out different ways to use the app such as:
- Socialising, ordering food and drink or using public transport
- Playing music, audiobooks or the radio through a smart speaker
- Controlling smart lights, smart plugs, windows, blinds or TV
- Asking a smart assistant about the weather, time, news or sports results.
The feedback they shared led to some big improvements, including:
- Making it quicker to train new phrases
- Adding XP and achievements to make it more fun to use
- Making navigation simpler
- Enabling predictive text, wake words and switch access.
In phase 2, we asked participants to donate speech recordings to Voiceitt’s speech database. These were used to develop continuous recognition, where the app interprets whatever the user says rather than just specific phrases. Forty-nine people took part, donating an incredible 33,000 recordings so far! Voiceitt have used these to develop a new dictation app, released for beta testing in 2022. Eight participants are currently testing this and results are promising, as shown in this short demo video from participant Claire Malone.
Both apps will still be available for free after Nuvoic ends, with the dictation app still in development.
Finally, we’ll leave the last word to participant Daniel Burgess:
“My name is Daniel Burgess. I am 35 years old and live in Cheshire, UK. I’m helping Voiceitt to make speech recognition work better for people with impaired speech. When Voiceitt recognizes what you say, it has a major impact!
A big part of it is independence. Everyone wants to be able to do simple tasks themselves, like turning a light on. Some people need technology like Voiceitt to enable them to be independent. I would encourage people, if they haven’t heard of Voiceitt, check it out!”
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