The VOICE Project is investigating the use of voice recognition
systems in conversation, conferences, television broadcasts and telephone
calls. It started in 1996 in the EC Joint Research Centre in Ispra and was
then sponsored and funded by the EC Directorate General Information Society
in years 1998-2000.
The Project has developed prototypes of user friendly interfaces allowing
an easier use of commercial products in translating the spoken voice into
PC screen messages and subtitles. This is a powerful help
for people with hearing impairment, reducing the gap between them and the
hearing world.
More than one hundred workshops have been organised for presenting
the VOICE Project to more than 6000 users. Its prototype demonstrator has
been used for subtitling part of the workshops, as demonstration of feasibility
and validation on the field. The subtitling system has been used in several
schools in order to transmit to all the students of a class
the same information, by the same words, in the same moment.
An other aim of the Project is that of uniting, by means of an Internet
VOICE Forum, Associations, companies, universities, schools, public
administrations and anyone else interested in voice recognition. Since it
is proposed as a dynamic tool of exchanging information, several pages are
loaded at a draft stage, in order to allow active discussion via the Web.
In years 2001 and 2002 the activities addressed the harmonisation of television
subtitling, in collaboration with the European Broadcasting Union
and the CENELEC Normalisation Committee, with the support of EC Directorate
General Enterprise.
In the European Year of People with Disabilities 2003, several activities
aimed at further spreading the achieved results, increasing the users' information
and the services providers' awareness. The European Year closing event has
been the Conference eAccessibility by Voice, held at Ispra (Varese,
Italy).
In year 2004 we continued spreading the Project's results, encouraging the
tests of the system, extending the application field to other techcnical means
and considering also other difficulties in communication, security and safety,
encountered by elderly, disabled or disadvantaged people.