Speak n Read

Etoile

Etoile

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Is anybody familiar with the Speak n Read? Have you tried it? Does it work? A friend of mine was supposed to get Speak n Read services for a seminar but the person canceled last-minute. She doesn't think the Speak n Read would have worked anyway. I am just wondering if anybody has tried it.

Here is the main page: Home
Another page about it: Speak N' Read
Here is a provider: Speak N Read of Tampa Bay
 
I hadn't seen this before, but I'm going to guess it doesn't work. I'm a computer science major, and speech recognition is one of the more interesting problems out there in the field at the moment. Basically, you need a really quiet environment and settings specific to the individual speaking (which means only one person at a time - this is how Dragon Speaking Naturally works) or you need to have an established corpus of words that may come in (this is how voice menus on the phone work).

Basically, if this was a reality, they wouldn't be marketing it to the d/Deaf - at least, not primarily. There would be a huge demand for this device in all sorts of other markets that are much larger and hence more lucrative; use by d/Deaf people would be at best an afterthought or a secondary market. Sort of like if RIM started marketing the Blackberry *just* to Deaf people.
 
I am familiar with the product

You can check it out at speak-n-read. It does work, there is about a half hour training period for it to pick up your voice patterns and then it types what you say. There is a video demo on the page. I know the guy that sells the unit, feel free to give him a call.
 
I just watched the demo video, and I'll stand by what I said, with some modifications. It seems to do decent VR. But it's still not a substitute for an interpreter, or CART or Typewell if that's your thing. Note that the two speakers in the video are very careful not to speak over each other at all, and that they're both speaking slowly, enunciating and separating more than is usual in speech, and only using simple, unambiguous phrases (i.e., no homophones or other soundalikes). Not something that would work in a real life environment like a seminar.
 
I just had the opportunity to play with the device over the weekend. You don't necessarily have to talk deliberately. The one thing is though, you have to train it. I took some video of how well it works, I will try to get it posted somewhere so you can see how it works.

Basically, you read to it from an internal library. It learns your accent and displays text based on that. After 10 minutes of training it worked pretty good.
 
From an internal library? So if I suddenly need to say "dysentery" and it doesn't know that word, it will choke? :(
 
Wow. That is so great idea! I love it, but it cost a least 4,000 dollars. It is probably not worth it in case if it is stolen. I am not interested to pay an insurance. Sorry, I think that it is too greedy for money.
 
Although it has an internal library, just like Microsoft's Word, you can add words to it. But, no! it doesn't choke. It will either try to use a word that sounds similar or will not print anything at all. Then print the next recognizable word spoken. The room does not have to be quiet, although noises will be picked up. In fact I just had a demo with a man while at Eat-N-Park (a family dinner) and it worked with about 90% accuracy and the person using it had no training on it.
 
ismi said:
I just watched the demo video, and I'll stand by what I said, with some modifications. It seems to do decent VR. But it's still not a substitute for an interpreter, or CART or Typewell if that's your thing. Note that the two speakers in the video are very careful not to speak over each other at all, and that they're both speaking slowly, enunciating and separating more than is usual in speech, and only using simple, unambiguous phrases (i.e., no homophones or other soundalikes). Not something that would work in a real life environment like a seminar.
Click to expand...
The Speak N Read (SNR) unit is not designed to replace interpreters, ASL or lip reading. It is designed to assist the public sector in communicating with hearing impaired or deaf. How many doctors offices have interpreters or staff who know ASL? I venture to guess, not many. When a person who has a hearing impairment enters a public resource center such as an Unemployment Office, how quickly, if at all, have they been able to find someone to help you communicate with the hearing? Again, I venture to guess, not very quickly. This is where the SNR comes in to play. It is only a TOOL to make access for the hearing impaired less stressful.
 
Etoile said:
Is anybody familiar with the Speak n Read? Have you tried it? Does it work? A friend of mine was supposed to get Speak n Read services for a seminar but the person canceled last-minute. She doesn't think the Speak n Read would have worked anyway. I am just wondering if anybody has tried it.

Here is the main page: Home
Another page about it: Speak N' Read
Here is a provider: Speak N Read of Tampa Bay
Click to expand...

I know the guy in PA that offers it. I played with it a little bit and it works pretty well. I think they just released a new software version too...

Website for:Speak n read North East provider
 
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