Dear Cheryl
Thank you so much for your interest in participating in the Speech Accessibility Project.
Unfortunately, you do not meet the current criteria for the project.
What??
As you know if you follow this blog, I sign up for all aphasia related research studies. I think if I count correctly, I’ve participated in 10 so far. I’m so very grateful for the researchers who want to make life with aphasia easier. They study the emotional effects, how music and other things help, ways to assess better and many others.
Recently I signed up for one which was about accessibility. On Monday I met with a lovely SLP, had a very interesting conversation and got denied. In all fairness, she said I was too high level to qualify for this particular study but will keep my information to tell me about other studies I would qualify for. The above was the first email I received after speaking to her. Then I received a very nice one from her.
I’m a bit torn. It is a good thing I guess to be denied from this study because I speak better than the requirements.
But I really wanted to be part of this study, apparently big tech like Google, apple, Meta, etc are involved. About 2 years ago, I participated in a Google accessibility study. This study seems very similar. At that time I had to record phases they gave me. My individual results were supposed to help as I used an app they provided. I don’t remember the name because I was unable to use it.
Because this study had me read the phrases not just speak naturally, I was able to overcome my speech challenges. Most of my therapy involved practicing reading words aloud and I got really good at enunciating.
I really wish they would study people like me. People who can be understood sometimes but not always. Many times, my Google assistant can’t understand my requests. We have our google assistant to perform things around the house. Such as A command to turn on and turn off lights both in the house and outside. “Ok, Google, take Porsche out” “ok Google, good morning “
I also use a lot of strategies for writing - spell check, online dictionary and thesaurus. I would like to be able to use voice to text features on the iPad or word processing but can’t because the apps don’t always understand what I’m trying to say. The Google app I participated in didn’t end up helping me do that even though it was supposed to.
I think if someone wants to study how to make apps (like Siri or Google assistant) more accessible to all people with communication disorders (apraxia of speech or dysarthria) or language disorders (aphasia), perhaps a study could be devised to capture real life speech using a wearable recorder and analyze speech and meaning by using AI and transcription.
Many years ago, I recruited parents for a language/speech study. This study had parents and their preschool children record how much language children hear throughout the day. A recorder was used and language or the number of words heard was documented. Now I can’t remember exactly what the study was called. But the same idea could be used to improve accessibility, I think. I’m not a researcher so I can’t be sure …..
I think the study used LENA https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7337141/
For now, I’ll just be grateful that I’ve come far enough that I don’t qualify for this one aphasia research study.
On to the next studies.
Until next time….
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