Design and development of voice controlled aids for motor-handicapped persons

In this paper we present two voice-operated systems that have been designed for Czech motor-handicapped people to allow them full access to computers and computer based services. The programs, which are named MyVoice and MyDictate, are complementary in their functions. Both employ ASR engines developed in our lab. The former is used primarily as a midsize-vocabulary (up to 10K words) voice commander for PC programs and PC-controlled home devices, the latter allows for very-large-vocabulary dictation (with more than 500K words). They are designed to cooperate and thus allow an entirely hands-free access to any computer application, including text typing, e-mail exchange, Internet browsing or handling telephone calls as well as for controlling external home devices such a TV/radio sets or air-conditioning.