INTRODUCING: Voiceitt – Winner of Category 3: Persons with speech impairment
Around 80 million people experience some form of disability in the EU, the European Parliament estimates this number will rise to 120 million by 2024. Persons with disabilities are at risk of various barriers to social and economic inclusion, which could hinder their active participation in society.
The 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Agenda pledges that no one is left behind, including persons with disabilities. It reinforces the vital role of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as a barrier remover for persons with disabilities. Therefore, it is crucial to join efforts at an institutional and international level to identify and promote innovative solutions that leverage the opportunities of ICT to foster equal inclusion of all and bridge the digital divide, particularly for Persons with Disabilities, enabling them to participate in and benefit from the Information and Knowledge Society.
In 2021, ITU held the 3rd edition of the Regional Competition of Innovative Digital Solutions for Accessible Europe. This competition promotes the goals and objectives of ITU, as well as the SDGs, in the specific context of Europe. The competition aims at fostering the research and development of new digital solutions which seek to bring more social inclusion and interaction as well as comfort and quality of life to the daily routine of persons with disabilities, in line with SDG 10 (reduced inequality). Simultaneously, it aims at fostering the innovation ecosystem with a focus on ICT Accessibility, in line with SDG 9 (industry, innovation, and infrastructure). From the call for the Regional Competition, we had received 97 submissions from 29 countries across Europe.
This “Meet the Accessible Europe winners" series introduces 5 awarded winners of the Regional Competition for Accessible Europe which stepped up to develop innovative solutions that empower and make a meaningful impact for all people, in particular persons with disabilities. Sara A Smolley, Co-Founder of Voiceitt, shared more with us about Voiceitt's story and goals.
Could you tell us more about Voiceitt and how did the idea first come about?
The idea and inspiration for developing Voiceitt came from personal experiences in the families of Voiceitt's founders. More than 10 years ago, Danny Weissberg (Voiceitt CEO)'s beloved grandmother had a stroke. She was the center of the family and after the stroke, she lost a lot of her motor abilities and independence. Her speech became unintelligible and when the family tried to communicate with her and could not understand her speech, Danny realized how painful it is to lose one's basic ability to communicate by voice.
This was the motivation to develop Voiceitt - a unique, leading AI speech recognition technology designed to recognize non-standard speech.
The inspiration for integrating Voiceitt with mainstream voice technologies came overwhelmingly from our community. Our company's early testing programs provided the opportunity for us to interact with and learn from hundreds of people with conditions affecting their speech, along with their families, speech and occupational therapists, and speech researchers around the world. We learned from these interactions that facilitating in-person communication (the reason we started this company!) is empowering and transformative, but in this new world of voice-enabled smart homes, smart cars, and smart assistants - all activated by voice - we could do a lot more: we could help people with non-standard speech access and interact with mainstream smart assistants and smart home devices, and thereby provide a whole new dimension and quality of life for our users.
How does your solution impact the lives of persons with disabilities?
The ability to navigate and control smart devices by voice for people with disabilities impacting motor control - especially during the COVID-19 pandemic - can decrease reliance on caregiver support, help maintain social distancing and lead to a more independent life.
Many of our early users have talked about how this technology can help provide greater independence in their lives. They've emphasized that the integration makes the benefits of voice technologies more accessible and therefore more equitable. Many people in our community with disabilities rely on 24-hour human caregiving support for their daily needs. Voice technology can provide a whole new dimension of independence. However, before Voiceitt came along, many of the people who could benefit from these technologies the most could not access them, because they do not have standard speech.
For instance, one of our users is a young woman with a speech and motor disability living in a care facility. Sometimes she would fall asleep with the light on in her room – not wanting, she told us, to “bother" a nurse to perform this everyday task. With Voiceitt, she can tell Alexa to turn off the light all on her own without relying on a caregiver's assistance.
Our priority is to provide the community of people with speech impairments with access to our application: individuals who we hope will utilize Voiceitt to improve their day to day lives, participate in more inclusive work, healthcare, and social environments, and increase their level of autonomy.
What aspects related to the human-centric approach would you like to highlight about Voiceitt?
We are eager to listen to our community and respond to their needs. Our goal is to continue to learn from our users and their families, and to do all that we can to make these individuals an integral part of the voice technology revolution.
Many of our early users have talked about how Voiceitt's technology can help provide greater independence in their lives. Standard speakers use voice technologies because they are convenient and fun - and our users are no different! We've noticed that popular commands and queries among early users include essentials like “turn on the light", but other popular ones are “Alexa, tell me a joke", or “let's play a game" - in other words, pure joy, and pure fun. Which is how technology should be - and for all users, of any ability.
What are your plans for 2021?
Our plan for 2021 is to bring our accessible technology to people with speech disabilities.
The Voiceitt app launches in 2021. The offering will include the Alexa integration, option along with speech recognition and translation mode, which allows individuals to communicate with others and be understood using their own voices.
The Voiceitt app is available for pre-order and will become available for use globally in Q3 2021.
How can the international community help innovators like you in achieving further digital inclusion and accessibility?
Simply put: Talk about it more. Building larger awareness of how inclusive initiatives impact the greater community can help more people understand that achieving digital inclusion and accessibility ultimately benefits everyone in our societies and can help build support for new innovations in this space.
We are thankful and proud of our joint efforts and success together with our nonprofit, government, and industry partners in pushing the topic of Accessibility into the mainstream dialogue. With the support of organizations like ITU, we can help convey the urgency that accessibility initiatives deserve - and which decision-makers in large tech companies and more broadly in government and society are acknowledging more and more.
Cross-sector and cross-country collaboration has been crucial for Voiceitt in each stage of our research, data collection, development, and growth in various countries and several languages. This award by ITU Accessible Europe, therefore, conveys the spirit of collaboration that is core to who we are as a company, and it also represents another step closer to realizing the vision we share: to make the benefits of speech recognition technologies accessible to people who can benefit from them the most.
As Satya Nadella, Microsoft's CEO, wrote, referring to inclusive, assistive technologies, “At its most powerful, technology can contribute to incredible human capability and insight. It can help people find immense joy and a deeper connection to the world around them, by enabling them to realize their professional and personal potential."
We will be working with the winners and finalists over the next months through the newly launched ITU-Zero Project Partnership, supporting innovators in various domains to leverage their full potential. Please refer to our website and social media channels for upcoming updates of our work. Learn more about the Regional Competition for Accessible Europe and check the shortlisted winners and finalists here: https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Regional-Presence/Europe/Pages/Events/2020/AE21/Regional-Competition.aspx.
