Stroke Survivors Tattler: Our New Approach To Communication Meets The Challenge!!!

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Our New Approach To Communication Meets The Challenge!!!

Thursday, October 16, 2014

A guest post by: Nicole Caron, the Social Media Manager at Voiceitt.

Nicole Caron

Voiceitt is an Israeli-based technology startup whose mission is to create innovative solutions that helps aid the lives of people with disabilities. The fundamental goal of VoiceItt is to foster independence and social inclusion for the disabled and improve their quality of life. Voiceitt is currently developing Talkitt, an innovative speech technology which is able to recognize unintelligible language and translate it into understandable speech. Ultimately, Talkitt is giving individuals with speech impairments their voice back!

Until now, the approach taken by developers of assistive technology for people with speech disabilities has completely bypassed voice, opting to use other modes of communication including communication boards that replace speech with symbols and images, head-tracking, eye-tracking, and switches. There are no products on the market today that allow people with speech disabilities to communicate using the most natural means, their voice. This is the gap Talkitt is trying to fill.

TalkItt is a step forward for better social inclusion for people that suffer from motor, speech, and language disorders; allowing users to freely express themselves and be understood with speed and ease. This innovative product is based on personalized speech recognition technology, which recognizes the user's speech and translates it into understandable language that is displayed on and vocalized by the user's device. TalkItt works on mobile and wearable devices, so it is portable and easy to use and without the stigma attached to clunky, obtrusive existing solutions (AAC). People with speech disabilities will be able to speak, and have TalkItt translate for them with minimal delay. The solution can be integrated to make phone calls, use social media, and activate smart phones and assistive devices, facilitating communication and control on all levels.

We have a basic pilot, however, Talkitt is currently in its developmental stage. Listed below are links to our company website and videos of individuals using Talkitt. We are collecting funds in order to further its production. In our efforts to raise money, we have launched an indiegogo crowdfunding campaign (link provided below) and have applied to various grants. We plan on having a basic Talkitt product out within 6-8 months.