Expert: Dawn M. Moore MA, CCC/SLP - 11/4/2009

Question
I am doing market research for a start-up company that is developing a speech recognition engine to assist speech pathologists and their clients by providing feedback on articulation consistency. To my knowledge there is a limited number of software programs on the market that incorporate speech recognition (these programs are usually to assist the person with communicating with other) and are not being used as feedback (with feedback the engine needs to identify the spoken word "as is" and not correct it even when articulated incorrectly). I was interested in your feedback as to your thoughts on this type of product and why this technology has not penetrated the market yet.

Answer
Interesting idea, but speech sound production is so variable person to person, I would think it would be hard to make software that could account for that.  Also, the feedback on the sound would be great, but without someone there (an SLP) telling you how to correct it, how much will it help?