| KTH's Department of Speech, Music and Hearing leads workpackage 3: Linguistic structures for eMail and eChat. | |
Qualifications
KTH's
Department of Speech, Music and Hearing has, since the 1950's,
been a world leader in speech research. This research includes
speech analysis, speech synthesis, speech recognition and
applications of these technologies in the development of
communication aids for persons with motor and speech disabilities.
The research staff includes engineers who have extensive experience
in acoustic analysis of speech and in phonetic and linguistic
applications, as well as linguists and speech-language pathologists
who have knowledge of speech, language and communicative processes
as well as extensive experience in evaluating communication aids,
both quantitatively and qualitatively. The Department has been
involved in many EU projects, among them the TIDE projects VAESS
and ENABL.
Existing products, experience and knowledge
The speech synthesis and speech recognition systems (the Infovox
systems) which have been distributed by Telia Promotor AB for over
a decade, were developed in the Department. Products which make use
of the speech synthesis system, also developed in the same
department are the Blissymbol-to-speech system Blisstalk, the
communication aids, Multi-Talk and Multi-Talk II and the word
prediction system, Prophet Swedish variants of the DragonDictate
and have also been developed in conjunction with the group.
The Department has a long tradition of evaluating the technology it
has developed with disabled users. It has also been active in
national and international projects and organisations relating to
communication for disabled persons. It was active in founding ISAAC
(International Society for Augmentative and Alternative
Communication) and in organising the program for the ISAAC Biennial
Conference in Stockholm in 1990. It was also instrumental in
creating the Swedish ISAAC chapter and maintained the secretariat
for this organisation for several years. In 1993, it sponsored an
ESCA Workshop, Speech and Language Technology for Disabled in
co-operation with TIDE and the Swedish Handicap Institute. Papers
have been contributed to all ISAAC, TIDE and ECART/AAAC conferences
and at many meetings of RESNA (the rehabilitation engineering
organisation for North America.
