Re: Request for Assistance Finding FLOSS Speech Recognition Software

[Peter Grasch <grasch simon-listens org>]

Hi,

Am Dienstag, 26. Juni 2012, 17:07:04 schrieben Sie:
> "That sounds good. This is the best thing I 've heard about, because of the
> flexibility. I don't really understand what he meant. It wasn't clear to me
> if he meant that you would have to add programming code of if he just meant
> you have to train everything.
No, you don't need to write any code. But you need to define your own 
vocabulary, grammar, commands and trainings texts. There are pre-built 
packages for this ("scenarios") already available but for such custom 
installations we recommend to build one according to the users needs and 
pronunciation (often there are certain words that are easier to pronounce 
consistently than others).

> I 'm not even going to try to get it to
> understand words at this point -- I just want to do the alphabet.
Perfect. That's certainly doable. There a pre-built scenarios online for the 
virtual keyboard (roughly) following the phonetic alphabet.

I'm not sure though if it's good to start with so many (relatively) words 
right away (I think it's around 35 words or so). A Dasher setup would lead to 
good results much quicker (only around 7 word).

But it's mainly a question of how much training is possible.

> Anyway,
> I'll just download it and see how it works. I might try both the Spanish
> and the English to see if one works better than the other."
I think both languages should work equally well. There is no bias towards any 
language because you'll build your own acoustic model. It doesn't matter to 
Simon if this is English, Spanish, French or Chinese. You can even mix 
languages if you want (take care with the phoneme sets in this case, though).

I'd suggest you pick the language you are more comfortable with and - again - 
can pronounce more consistently (remember, you're going to call out commands 
spontaniously during "normal" usage).

> I (this is Meg speaking again) am currently working on GNOME through Google
> Summer of Code. I will see if I can help Joe get started when I am done
> with GSoC. Thanks very much for the information, Peter. I will contact you
> when he gets started.
Setting up Simon is not that hard considering there is a lot of documentation 
available.
Still, setting up Simon *well* for people with dysarthric speech can be a lot 
harder as there is a lot of potential for improvement from a stock 
installation. For example, a custom phonetic transcription can improve 
recognition rates tremendously (we went from around 45 % recognition rate to > 
95 % simply by using custom transcriptions for one of our test users suffering 
from cerebral palsy).

That's why we do also offer consulting through the Simon Listens e.V. where we 
basically build you a custom speech model for use with Simon according to your 
needs for a modest fee to cover our expenses (non profit organization).

Let me know if this is something you'd be interested in.

Best regards,
Peter