ComTEC Occupational Therapists get regular requests from people wishing to explore options for Speech Recognition technology.
There are many proven effective systems on mobile and computer-based platforms which we can show teams in sessions; but we do find these all have limitations when it comes to recognising the speech of people who might be considered non-standard or difficult to understand by unfamiliar partners.
Fortunately, though there is some hope for change and developers are working on alternative systems which can detect non-standard speech and convert it to text onscreen to allow the person to write independently. Two notable examples of this are Project Relate from Google and Voiceitt.
Relate grew out of Project Euphonia which was a partnership between Google Labs and the Steve Gleeson Foundation for people with ALS/MND. It uses innovative machine learning technology to develop a personalised speech recognition tool.
Voiceitt is a small Israeli based startup. Initially they developed an iOS app which could be used to train a unique voice prolife to use for controlling smart home devices. They have just launched their web based service which allows people with non-standard speech to generate their own recognition profile by reading phrases to the system.