New Voiceitt assistive app enables people with speech impairments to communicate in their own voice

The launch of the latest Voiceitt assistive app for people with speech impairments comes at a time when disabled people are most in need of support. The Covid-19 pandemic has further isolated people with speech and motor disabilities, cutting them off from family members or care facilities.

Voiceitt has offered the speech recognition app at no cost for an initial period. The aim is to alleviate some of the hardships created by the pandemic and improve the quality of life for as many people affected as possible. The Israeli company’s app enables people with speech and motor impairments following brain injuries, strokes, mental disabilities, degenerative diseases, and other potential speech impairments) to communicate with their own voice.

App for speech impaired people improves quality of life

The Voiceitt app is being offered for free to individuals, institutions, nursing facilities and organisations for a limited period.

Everyone deserves to be able to express themselves and to be understood, 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. – Danny Weissberg, CEO-Founder, Voiceitt

Voiceitt’s app has been integrated with Amazon’s Alexa since last year to increase independence and quality of life for people with speech and motor disabilities. Individuals using Voiceitt start off with a simple training phase. This allows the software to recognise a person’s speech better. 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.

Alexa integration extends app to more speech impaired people

“In collaboration with Voiceitt, we have been able to bring Alexa to even more customers,” said Peter Korn, Director of Accessibility, 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.”

How Voiceitt app works

Voiceitt’s proprietary automatic speech recognition engine can recognise atypical speech as well as speech patterns including utterances, cadence of speech, breathing pauses and non-verbal sounds, in any language. App users can build a personalised dictionary and train the app to recognise their unique way of speaking. This process takes about five minutes on average per phrase. The app then recognises a user’s trained phrases in real-time and translates output into typical speech. This enables o 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.

A growing number of people across the world are gaining access to smart home devices that enable them to perform daily tasks like turning on the lights, playing music, etc. People with speech impairments who find it hard to use their own voices to use such speech-powered technologies, can now turn to Voiceitt app instead of depending on others.