Apple always tries to help the maximum to facilitate the control of their devices to people who have some type of deficiency. The section of «Accessibility»Is designed for this, with endless aids and modifications to adapt your Apple device to your convenience.
Following this line, Apple now faces an important challenge: getting Siri to understand without errors when a user who speaks stutters. Bravo for Apple.
Wall Street Journal today posted a article where he explains that Apple is investigating how to improve its Siri voice assistant so that it understands users who have some atypical voice patterns, such as stutterers.
To do this, it has built a voice bank with 28.000 audio samples of stuttering voices, as explained in the report. With this he intends that Crab Recognize if a person stutters, so that you can better interpret the spoken instructions you receive.
Siri can be activated by voice on iPhones, iPads and Macs, and especially HomePod and HomePod mini, using the voice command «Hey Siri»Followed by a request. However, for users who stutter, the current version of Siri typically interprets pauses in the voice as the end of a voice command.
The research article acknowledged that the current approach to tweaking Siri for such dysfunction is still a blueprint, and that other systems continue to be investigated to achieve it.
Finally, Apple concludes that while its current research focuses on users who stutter, future studies will explore other categories such as dysarthria, with totally different audio patterns.
Jane fraser, President of the Stuttering Foundation, has publicly thanked the efforts that are being carried out by large technology companies so that their voice assistants are able to recognize the commands of a stuttering user.
He literally thinks that “For people who stutter, being heard and understood can be a fight for life. The evolution of technology to account for what people say, rather than how they say it, opens the door to tens of millions of people who struggle with stuttering.
We hope that this project will soon be a reality, and Siri can interact with total normality with a group of people who, unfortunately, cannot do so today.