Included in our white label digital marketing services is sharing the latest industry news. Improving speech recognition technology is one piece of a larger puzzle that sees the world making significant strides towards making digital features available and accessible to a broader range of people. 

In the past, many have been denied access to certain digital features due to their impairments or disabilities, a major disservice to major portions of the world’s population. The Speech Accessibility Project is part of the larger trend where large tech companies are working towards making the technological world accessible to all. 

What Is The Speech Accessibility Project?

The Speech Accessibility Project is a program pioneered by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign along with five major technology companies. Together, university researchers and resources from the tech giants involved are working side by side to create technology that will make voice recognition technology accessible and useful to people with different speech patterns, impairments, and disabilities. 

Paid volunteers are being recruited to contribute recorded voice samples that represent a diverse range of speech patterns which will be used to train machine learning models to understand a wider range of speech patterns. 

Why Is Speech Recognition Accessibility Important?

Speech recognition makes it possible for technology to recognize spoken words and translate them for digital applications. Those applications can be for automatic captions, dictate text and more. One of the most common applications for speech recognition is voice control used for digital assistants like Siri and Alexa or for controlling various smart technologies like automated homes. 

While speech recognition is already incredibly sophisticated, those with non-standard speech patterns are often unable to benefit from it. People with speech affected by Parkinson’s disease, Lou Gherig’s disease and other diseases and disorders find speech recognition unable to interpret their speech and are thus unsupported and excluded from speech recognition features. Speech recognition accessibility makes it possible for everyone to benefit from voice recognition technology rather than only those with standard speech patterns. 

Who Is Part Of The Speech Accessibility Project Initiative? 

Part of what makes The Speech Accessibility Project so significant is the fact that major players in the world of technology are teaming up with researchers rather than competing with one another to offer the improved technology first. Working together, it is likely that we will see huge leaps and bounds made towards the initiative’s goal faster than if they were to work alone. Tech giants participating in the initiative include: 

• Apple
• Google
• Microsoft
• Meta
• Amazon

We will likely see other big companies in the digital space joining the Speech Accessibility Project and achieving incredible results. 

How Will The Speech Accessibility Project Affect Digital Agencies?

For many, voice-powered search is a major part of the online experience. From online shopping to navigating the internet and social media, more and more people are taking advantage of speech recognition to navigate the digital world. With accessibility, more people will have access to the online space and, therefore, your digital agency’s clients. This is only the beginning for speech recognition accessibility. We will surely see a greater impact on everyone in the online space with time. 

Globital USA is a digital marketing reseller offering white label digital marketing services to a range of digital agencies. We believe in the importance of inclusivity and accessibility and endeavor to reflect this in our work with digital agencies. Interested in working with us as your white label resource partner? Contact us at support@globitalmarketing.com,