Assistive tools for the motor-handicapped people using speech technologies: Lithuanian case

Abstract

The paper presents analysis of the possibilities to use voice technologies for the partial integration of people with disabilities. The particular interest has been expressed to the motor-handicapped people. The special wheelchair with the voice command recognition capabilities has been designed. Evaluation of command's recognition accuracy shows high dependency on the proper detection of the utterance boundaries. The acoustic boundaries detection algorithm has been proposed. This algorithm allowed achieve high accuracy of the detection of acoustic events boundaries such as words or phrases even in the presense of high noise. The proper detection leads to the increased accuracy of voice commands recognition and the overall satisfaction of users. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.