Rachel Levy, SLPD, CCC-SLP, Co-Founder of The Babel Group, visited with Father Raymond Bucko, an active Voiceitt community member.
Voiceitt, the Israel-based leader in speech recognition technology for non-standard speech, accented English, or aging voices as both an Augmentative Alternative Communication(AAC) tool for communicating with others and an Assistive Technology(AT) tool for dictation, home automation, and more.
Voiceitt’s unique speech database includes speech recordings from people with impaired and atypical speech to augment and improve Voiceitt’s voice AI technology and thus provide a more inclusive and accurate experience. Voiceitt further improves its recognition of non-standard speech by providing personalized recognition after individuals record a minimum of 200 phrases. Finally, Voiceitt continues training on spontaneous speech collected using Voiceitt’s web application. This means the more someone with unique speech uses Voiceitt, the better it will understand them!
Voiceitt was developed as a tool for nonstandard speakers. Clinicians and educators are vital partners in helping students and clients succeed.
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- Enhanced Communication: Students/clients communicate clearly & in real-time with desired emotions.
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- Improved Outcomes: Raise achievement/outcome scores, reduce frustration, and minimize miscommunication setbacks.
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- Increased Efficiency: More productive, faster text input (increased words per minute), and streamlined collaboration.
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- Empowerment: Students/clients self-advocate, participate in decision-making, and explore goals.
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- Accessibility: Enable voice-based assistive technology, facilitate telehealth in rural areas, and decrease isolation.
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- Greater Independence: Students/clients reduce reliance on caregivers for daily tasks.
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- Share Their Voice: Empower students and clients to tell their stories and demonstrate their full capabilities to reach their full potential and be more productive at work, school, and in the community.
Voiceitt Inclusion Criteria:
Do you have a client who has intentional and intact language but struggles to be understood by technology (e.g., smart home speakers like Alexa or dictation systems like Dragon)? Is your client able to be understood by familiar listeners but struggling to communicate with strangers or infrequent communication partners? Do they prefer to use their speech to communicate instead of existing Augmentative Alternative Communication (AAC) systems? Try Voiceitt!
Evaluators Demo account:
Professionals evaluating clients can access Voiceitt for a 3-month demo. Gain awareness before introducing Voiceitt to your clients and meet with The Babel Group SLPs to discuss your client’s needs. Explore the advanced features to enable hands-free recording, select output voices, and integrate with Voiceitt for Chrome, virtual meeting platforms like Zoom, and more. Your demo account is just for you and should not contain any client recordings. To extend your trial beyond 3 months, meet with us for a Voiceitt update and renew your demo account. Keep Voiceitt to demo, mirror, and model using Voiceitt in all of your therapy sessions.
Client Engagement:
Step 1: Set up your client’s 30-day trial.
During your evaluation, help your client sign up for their 30-day trial. They can log into web.voiceitt.com from any desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone. Provide recording instructions and adjust settings during the first 10-20 recordings. Adjust hands-free settings, change settings to adjust voice output, Silence Time-out and Voice Playback Speed (see tutorial).
Recording tips:
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- Find a quiet place. Place the microphone close to the person recording.
- Ensure only the person needing to use Voiceitt is heard in the recording.
- If your client needs literacy support, have them practice the phrase first. Once they’re confidently able to attempt each word, record the phrase. You can’t delete or change the text, so make sure they are able to speak the phrase. Skip as many phrases as needed, they will not run out.
- You can request a Simple Language or Short Phrase set from support@voiceitt.com.
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Provide the Voiceitt Trial Handout for your client can continue recording independently or with a family member or caregiver. Any device with internet or data will work. The recordings are only in the web app and don’t stay on the device. Anyone can support recording in a quiet place. 50 recordings is only the minimum to unlock the Speak and Dictate modes. We recommend continuing beyond 200 for the best results.
Step 2: Evaluate the Use of Voiceitt
Your client should have completed their minimum recordings during your next therapy session. Speak and Dictate modes will be ready to test. Collect data on Voiceitt’s functionality for Interactions (Speak), Storytelling (Dictate), and Integrations (Google for Chrome or Virtual meetings). See Table 1 for an example. Voiceitt’s goal is to minimize recognition errors to less than 20%. There will be some mistakes, but the goal is to be able to communicate and maintain the intended semantics or comprehensibility. We score a 1. Correct recognition, 2. An error but able to infer the meaning, or 3. The meaning was lost. The goal is to have primarily 1 and 2. Voiceitt will learn over time, so this initial data collection does not reflect the ongoing improvements Voiceitt will make.
Table 1. Data Collection example (compared to baseline comprehension without Voiceitt)
Mode Used | What they said | What Voiceitt Said | Comprehensibility |
Speak | How are you? | How are you? | 1 |
Dictate | I didn’t like that. | I don’t like this. | 2 |
Dictate | I have a Cock-a-poo*. | I have a cotton shoe. | 3 |
*add Cock-a-poo to Personal Vocabulary
Voiceitt improves the most when your client speaks spontaneously into the web app. Voiceitt will learn over time, so this initial data collection does not reflect the ongoing improvements Voiceitt will make over time. We have seen an average of 8.7% improvement in recognition accuracy with an additional 200 annotated spontaneous speech samples. However, there is a plateau in the accuracy after ~1,000 total speech samples.
Image of Voiceitt Dictation Mode: Note a few errors that allowed continued inferred meaning.
Other variables to consider in your assessment are the same for all evaluations. Has Voiceitt improved turn-taking, conversation participation, communication rate, writing speed (wpm), and the ability to share information beyond basic wants and needs across multiple settings and communication partners? Academically, Voiceitt is the only accommodation for students with speech impairments who require speech-to-text support and where the traditional Dragon / TalkType products are inaccessible. See Table 2 for an example.
Table 2: Impact Data example (compared to baseline data without Voiceitt)
Task | Notes | ||
Initiation | 50% increase in introducing new topics 90% improvement in taking their turn in conversation with peers 70% increase in initiating communication with new people | ||
Speech-to-text accommodation | Demonstrated 80 words per minute(WPM) and completed assigned essay with modified independence within 1 hour. Baseline: 9 WPM with moderate assistance to complete writing assignments with a minimum of 3 hours. Text messaging/chat with peers with adequate turn-taking 3x (previously unable to participate in chat) | ||
Provision of information & Social closeness | 10x increase in phrase length. Baseline ~4-word utts with familiar listeners, with Voiceitt, storytelling at ~4 paragraph length on 3 occasions with new communication partners. |
Step 3: Fund Voiceitt Subscription
Voiceitt is a subscription-based service because there is a cost involved in storing and using recordings to better understand an individual’s speech. Voiceitt also continues to learn how someone speaks as they use it. These costs include the work performed by Voiceitt’s Team and Cloud storage to keep Voiceitt optimized and secure for each person.
The Babel Group is a Voiceitt tech partner serving the US and Canada. Founded by two speech-language pathologists with extensive experience with custom speech recognition, Rachel Levy and Katie Seaver are ready to support your Voiceitt Journey.
Voiceitt is more than just a communication tool; it’s a catalyst for positive change in the lives of educators, therapists, students, and clients. We are proud to be able to support our Voiceitt through The Babel Group. We’ve heard countless success stories from educators and therapists who have seen the transformative impact of Voiceitt on their practice; we look forward to hearing yours.

