UnMute

Opening Spoken Language Interaction to the Currently Unheard

The Research


UnMute is a collaborative EPSRC-funded project between the University of Edinburgh, Swansea University, Translators Without Borders and Auris Tech, aiming to address the limitations of today's speech and voice-based interactions and open up intelligent interfaces to the currently digitally ‘unheard’.

While state-of-the-art natural language systems are beginning to address the needs of “conventional” users (i.e., those who speak a widely spoken and written language; and who have relatively high degrees of literacy, exposure to digital interactions and other resources), there are many hundreds millions of people who are being excluded globally. Paradoxically, these users who have resource constraints (such as low digital and textual literacy) could be the ones to most benefit from advances in speech-based interactive systems, opening up economic, social and educational possibilities that are currently unmet.

In advancing this area of research, we have produced a toolkit and blueprint that can be used by many other low or zero-resource language communities, worldwide.

Publications

The Team