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"Speech Recognition and Accessible Education"
Written by Dr. Sara Basson,
IBM
This article appears
in the July/August
2002 issue of
Speech Technology Magazine
Disabled populations
are key drivers in
many technological
innovations. Many of these innovations are now so integral
to mainstream markets that we
can forget their historical
roots. A fascinating
list of a number of these innovations is chronicled by Steve
Jacobs, of The Center
for An Accessible Society
www.accessiblesociety.org/topics/technology/eleccurbcut.htm).
A few highlights are
extracted below:
- In 1808, Pellegrino
Turri built the
first typewriter,
so that his blind
friend could write
intelligibly.
- Alexander Graham
Bell was granted
a patent for the
telephone in 1876, which
was one of the devices
he developed in
support of his work
with the deaf.
- Early speech synthesis
work at Bell Labs,
such as the "voice coder", were
originally envisioned
as machines to help
deaf people speak more intelligibly.
The list continues,
including such mainstream
staples as captioned
films, e-mail as a
basic component of
the Internet, and scanners.
In 1952, Bell Labs
announced the first
speech recognizer,
which achieved 97%
accuracy on digits
one through ten, with
speaker training. The
race to "solve" the
speech recognition challenge was on. Vocabulary size expanded
over time, and user training requirements decreased. In 1998,
continuous speech recognition products emerged, with IBM's ViaVoice™ and
Dragon's NaturallySpeaking™. The vocabularies were large
and expandable, the price was affordable, and users could speak
in a normal voice as long as they spoke clearly. Speech recognition
was now available to the mainstream retail marketplace. This
was a dream come true for users with disabilities, waiting for
just such a breakthrough. Users could now dictate documents into
their computers, even if they had motor difficulties interfering
with typing, or dyslexia interfering with writing.
Disabled populations
are once again pushing
the envelope and prodding
technologists to address
their pressing need
to receive accessible
education. Imagine
a regular classroom,
for a deaf student.
In order to succeed,
the student will need intermediary access, such as a sign interpreter
or
a stenographer. These
are expensive propositions,
and not always available.
Envision a student
with motor disabilities,
or learning disabilities.
To succeed in the classroom,
these students must
rely on "note takers" ? paid, or volunteer.
Again, the student (or school) may need to incur high costs,
there will be uncertain quality, and a notetaker might not even
be available.
These were the problems
facing St. Mary's University
in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Dr. David Leitch, director
at St. Mary's Atlantic
Centre of Research,
Access, and Support
for Students with Disabilities,
opted courageously
to do something about
it, by spawning the
Liberated Learning Project (LLP). With
a grant they received
from the McConnell
Foundation in Canada,
and support from IBM, they embarked on a
project to bring speech
recognition to the
college classroom.
In the Liberated Learning
environment, professors
lecture via wireless
microphones, and IBM
ViaVoice™ software converts speech to text. IBM Research
developed software (IBM NetScribe) to manage the text output
display and post-lecture editing requirements. The lecture appears
on a large screen at the front of the classroom. Deaf and hard-of-hearing
students can view the lecture in real time. All the students
can obtain the text of the lecture online after the class and
can download it, print it, convert it to Braille or listen to
it via a voice synthesizer. The project team has noticed that
international and non-disabled students also use the instantaneous
display of the lecture as a reference check for their own notes
and understanding. Furthermore, every student wants access to
the speech recognition generated lecture notes. The project has
expanded into an international initiative, including Saint Mary's
University, IBM, Aliant Telecommunications, Deafax International,
UK; University College of Cape Breton; the Alexander Graham Bell
Institute; Ryerson University, Toronto; and the University of
the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia.
The Liberated Learning
Project continues to
garner the interest
of universities trying
to improve access for
students with disabilities.
Keith Bain, the LLP
project manager, hopes
this will eventually
receive widespread
acceptance as a model
for universities to
better accommodate students in the classroom. The reach can extend
beyond the university
to lower school education,
and to seminars and
meetings in the workplace.
Once again,
the unique needs of
disabled populations
turn out to be not
so unique after all,
and technology advances
for everyone.
If you would like to
learn more about
participating in the Liberated Learning
Project, go to www.liberatedlearning.com.
To find out more
about IBM's accessibility
initiatives, go to www.ibm.com/able.
Sara Basson is Manager
of Accessible Research
Productization
at IBM, and a member (and former
president) of the
Board of Directors
of AVIOS. << Return to Main Resources Page
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