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Voice-activated devices; are they a help or a challenge?
A reporter with the Wall Street Journal interviewed me last week for her story about how technology companies are working to train their voice assistants (such as Siri and Amazon Alexa) to better understand people with dysarthria and other non-standard speech.
You can read about my interview experience here: Echo! Can You Understand Me, Now?
Do you use voice-activated devices for entertainment or do they help you with daily activities – – like operating lights, appliances, and such?
Do you find it easy to use them or do your ALS symptoms create a challenge to use them?
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3 Replies
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Voice activated devices such as voice activated recliner that I sleep in at night are great when the Wi-Fi is working. what a mess and a real pain when the Wi-Fi is down. I’ve slept in my wheelchair 3 nights because of Wi-Fi issues. hopefully we have those issues resolved. Voice a activated lights in the kitchen are a great help too since I can no longer reached the light switch.
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I am in fairly early stage of ALS, I can’t walk but while my voice is much weaker I can still speak. My wife and I sleep in separate room to give her more sleep than when I’m making noise struggling to turn over and find a comfortable (somewhat) position. I have an Alexa dot beside my bed and she can still understand me when I tell her to call my wife when I need help. I find that Alexa is having more difficulty understanding me and have been thinking of other methods of calling my wife. Obviously the article was very interesting and I appreciate Dagmar’s work in this research. Hopefully it will aid all of us in the future.
Dagmar, you are my hero. When I get down or frustrated I think “what would Dagmar do”. You are an inspiration.
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Dagmar, Thank you for doing the interview! It is very interesting reading it. We recently got Xfinity TV and it understands me, but how come my husband never understands me? He isn’t intuitive about what Im trying to say either. My daughter can always figure my speech attempts. Anyway Siri is 50:50.
I keep telling myself talking is overrated.
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