Speech and Language Tools

Practical Technologies

Each item in the table below links to either an established computer-based tool for aiding, or a research and development collection of programs and people engaged in assisting human communication studies.

OGI CSLU TOOLKIT

CSLU KIT CONTINUED

VoiceXML FORUM*

Tellme^

IBM Voice

"Voice Browser"+

DRAGON Dictate

KURZWEIL Reading

MICROSOFT Voice
*VoiceXML is receiving wide adoption as an HTML-like language for creating telephone-based speech recognition dialogs.

+ The W3C Voice Browser group is 1) working to further VoiceXML; and, 2) investigating natural language extensions.

^Tellme presents a development studio, tools, and hosting (all free; a toll-free number is included). Students can develop and post an Internet voice-interactive application. Calls can try it. If it gets great reviews Tellme will even put it on their voice portal at 800-555-TELL.

Technology and Disabilities

This section is adapted from email sent by Dr. Daniel Hilton Chalfen , formerly with UCLA Disabilities Computing Program (DCP).

Regarding universal access projects please see: Aiding Conference

WGBH and their National Center on Accessible Media (NCAM) lead the field. See: WGBH and Projects. (Includes science mathematics instructional multimedia software guidelines.)

MIT Physics Tutor - PiVoT

Trace Center

Section 508, Civil Rights Division, U.S. Department of Justice: see the report "Information Transaction Machines (ITMs) Accessibility. The category ITM includes automated teller machines - ATMs, ticket vending machines, computer kiosks, electronic building directories, fare machines, and point of sale customer card payment systems.

This report "User Needs, and Strategies for Addressing Those Needs," U. Wisconsin Trace R&D Center involves Disability and Rehabilitation Research.

Equal Access to Software and Information (EASI) offers on-line training classes on access to multimedia, the web, adaptive techology Accessible IT; see their multimedia class.

Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic (RFB&D) Talking Books http://www.rfbd.org/digitalaudio. Digital Talking Books. See "Daisy Consortium" and note that solutions that work for people with visual disabilities often help people with learning disabilities.

A key reference is the WWW Accessibility Guidelines the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web Access Initiative (WAI). This includes Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0, Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0, and User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.

Patrick Burke, UCLA DCP, is a great on-campus resource: he himself is a user of, and trainer on, most of the existing adaptive technology for people with blindness. He does usability work for campus web designers.
Conceptual Theories

Each item in the table below opens to a fundamental aspect of human communication.

Pictographs

Alphabets*

Symbols+

Signs^

*Know your a, b, c's. One invention (P. Ladefogea), all derived from same source. Note contrast with syllabarys. Mnemonic effects.

+Symbolic reasoning and incapacities are explored three ways: Fractional Quantity in Ancient Egypt; Large Numbers; and Mental Blocks.

^Semiotics is the term for this field, which might be summarized by the word naming. A seminal and readable work on this subject is Hayakawa, S. I., Language in Thought and Action.
2-18-04 Version http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~klinger/slc/tools.html
©2004 Allen Klinger