Application enables people with non-standard speech to converse with others and to control Alexa-enabled smart home devices and features using their own voices
Voiceitt, a leading speech recognition company for non-standard speech, today announced the launch of its app, which is available here on the Apple Store. The Voiceitt app can be downloaded for free by individuals or in volume by institutions, nursing facilities and organizations. The assistive technology app, which will be offered for free at launch for a limited period, empowers individuals to navigate their environments and control smart home devices using their own voice commands.
While a growing portion of the world’s population now has access to the advantages of smart home devices that enable them to turn on the lights, listen to music, and more with their voice, millions of people who live with speech that is hard to understand often cannot use their own voices to utilize such widespread speech technology. Now, these individuals can reclaim their independence with Voiceitt’s life-changing voice recognition technology.
The launch comes at a pivotal time for many with atypical speech. Isolation and social distancing in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic have left many individuals with speech and motor impairments either separated from loved ones or cut off from care facilities and other support often crucial to their wellbeing. By initially offering its app at no cost, Voiceitt aims to mitigate some of the hardships created by the pandemic and improve the quality of life for as many people affected as possible.
“Everyone deserves to be able to express themselves and to be understood,” said Danny Weissberg, Voiceitt CEO and Co-founder. “With this launch, countless people with non-standard speech will be able to use their own voice to easily communicate with caregivers, loved ones and even their smart home devices. I’m so proud to make our technology available to this wonderful community. Voice recognition technology is finally becoming accessible to everyone.”
Voiceitt’s app integrates with Amazon’s Alexa to increase independence and quality of life for individuals with speech and motor disabilities. The Voiceitt experience begins with a simple training phase, allowing the software to better recognize an individual’s speech. After the user repeats a set of words and phrases several times, the Voiceitt app builds an artificial intelligence-powered speech model that allows the individual to communicate specific commands.
“In collaboration with Voiceitt, we have been able to bring Alexa to even more customers,” said Peter Korn, Director of Accessibility at Amazon Lab126. “We strive to make all Amazon products and services as delightful and easy to use as possible for everyone. Voiceitt’s integration with Alexa helps us do just that, enabling customers with speech impairments to enjoy all that Alexa has to offer and help them live more independently.”
Voiceitt’s proprietary automatic speech recognition engine – which combines machine learning with state-of-the-art speech analysis technology – can recognize not only atypical speech, but also speech patterns including utterances, cadence of speech, breathing pauses and non-verbal sounds, in any language. App users can build a personalized dictionary and train the app to recognize their unique pronunciation, a process which takes no more than five minutes on average per phrase. The app then recognizes a user’s trained phrases in real-time and translates output into typical speech – enabling users to convey complex sentences that help them better navigate their daily lives.
“The degree of independence our app helps give to members of our user community has inspired us to develop our technology even further and make it available to even more people. Our goal is to give voice to everyone,” said Weissberg