VOICE
giving a voice to the deaf by developing awareness of voice-to-text recognition capabilities

author: G. Pirelli

ISIS's VOICE project is investigating the use of speech recognition systems in conversation, conferences and telephone calls, with their translation into PC screen messages. This is potentially a powerful help for deaf people, reducing the gap between them and the hearing world.
The project is developing prototypes of user friendly interfaces, allowing an easier use of commercial products, taking into account thespecific userrequirements of the deaf.
One of the objective of the project is that of uniting, by means of an Internet VOICE Forum, associations, companies, universities, schools, public administrations and anyone else that could benefit from research in voice recognition.

PHOTO caption:
Presentation of the VOICE Project to a group of school teachers, interested in using the prototype in the class room for allowing deaf students to attend the lessons with their hearing colleagues.
A slide is projected on the left screen by the speaker, who is speaking into a microphone connected to a PC: the text generated by the speech recognition system is converted into subtitling lines on the PC screen and projected on the right wall-screen, under the speaker's image taken by a video-camera.