AskHezi :

Automatic transcription and subtitling

Overview

We have developed an innovative dictation system in Basque designed for children's voices; it will contribute towards the learning process of children and youngsters with motor disabilities. This system allows text to be dictated through speech and will enable students to write essays in Basque without having to type. The system automatically transcribes what is said in Basque and allows corrections or modifications to be made via voice commands.

Challenge

Language and voice technologies are extremely useful when promoting inclusivity for all students in the world of education. Most tools used in everyday life in schools have speech generation, machine translation and automatic voice recognition systems built into them. However, most of them are of little use in Basque and require significant technological improvement in terms of children's voices. Our systems that convert speech to text (ASR) have been trained using the voices of boys and girls.

Challenge

In this project, we collaborated with the Association of Ikastolas (Basque-medium schools) of the Basque Country, the Seaska Commission for Integration, and the Navarrese association Sortzen Elkartea. Their involvement in obtaining children's recordings was crucial in developing the system. We also benefited from the advice of Langune, and the project received two grants from the “Euroregional Citizenship” call for proposals and one grant from the SPRI (Basque Business Development Agency).

Result

The AskHezi system, a new dictation system that will help children and youngsters with motor problems to do their schoolwork, has been created.