Community-led Stuttered Speech Collection with StammerTalk
By sharing our experience and findings from StammerTalk’s stuttered speech collection project, we advocate for a new AI data paradigm of community data stewardship, especially for data from and about marginalized communities.
Inclusive virtual conferencing: Creating personal and empathetic experiences
As we enter the era of remote and hybrid work, videoconferencing has become an essential for today’s workplace. While telecommunication technologies are often optimized for efficiency and productivity, the emotional experience of communication is often under supported.
At AImpower, we work with the stuttering community to investigate and re-invent videoconferencing technologies to promote an…
Lost in Translation
Dyslexia is a neurodivergence that impacts one’s ability to process and produce textual information. While previous research has identified unique patterns in the writings of people with dyslexia – such as letter swapping and homophone confusion – that deviant themselves from the text typically used in the training and evaluation of common Natural Language Processing…
Stuttering and Video Conferencing: Strategies and Best Practices
We report our experience hosting the “Claim Your Virtual Presence” workshop at National Stuttering Association (NSA) conference, and share the strategies and best practices for inclusive video conferencing.
Calling All Stutterers Who Participate in Video Calls
Join us at the “Claim Your Virtual Presence” workshop at the National Stuttering Association’s Annual Conference this year!
CHI – W4A 2023 Trip Report
We reflect our recent trip to the CHI and W4A conferences and share our learnings.
Stuttering and Voice-activated AI: Panel Reflections
I recently attended the “Voice-Activated AI for Stuttered Speech Convergence Symposium” organized by Michigan State University, Friends, and West Michigan University. I was honored to speak at Sociotechnical Challenges in Voice-Activated AI Panel with a fantastic group of panelists and participants from academic, industry, and nonprofits. It was an incredible experience to join the technical…
AImpower’s First Year in Review
Reflection on our first-year’s efforts and learnings, and looking ahead into our second year’s growth and new initiatives!
“Break the invisible wall” – upcoming talk about challenges and opportunities for people who stutter to participate in academic conferences
Post-OSS updates and reflections (1/24/2023) I tried out the format of doing the “live” presentation with a recorded talk (slides) today, and it worked surprisingly well, especially for virtual meetings! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJNQkXNImXU How it works: What I like about this format: I am so glad that we tried out this format – first time for me,…
Publishing our research at CHI 2023
We are excited to share that, our research with the stuttering community on their videoconferencing experience has been accepted by the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’23)! Our paper, titled “‘The World is Designed for Fluent People’: Benefits and Challenges of Videoconferencing Technologies for People Who Stutter”, details the methodology…
Join us in Austin for Web4All 2023
Web4All is a premier conference for accessibility research, co-located with the Web Conference since 2003. Next year’s conference marks the 20th year anniversary for Web4All (!), and it will take place in Austin, Texas from April 30 to May 1, 2023, with the theme of “Accessibility in the Metaverse”. Shaomei Wu – the founder and…
Research Update: Barriers And Opportunities with Videoconferencing for People Who Stutter
We share the updates and highlight from our recent interview research with people who stutter on their experiences with videoconferences and videoconferencing technologies.
NSA 2022 Convention Experience and Reflections
Lindsay and Shaomei had a discussion about Shaomei’s recent experience at the National Stuttering Association annual conference, covering topics across AImpower’s goals, Shaomei’s personal identity as PWS, her connection to the stuttering community, and the lessons she learned at the conference.
AI and Systematic Marginalization of Disabled People
I had the pleasure to be invited to speak to students from the Columbia Data for Social Good club at their monthly event on April 27, 2022. Under the theme of Equity for Marginalized Communities using Tech, I discussed the issues, challenges, and opportunities with AI for disabled people. Here is an outline of my talk (slides)…
Speech Technology for People Who Stutter
Speech recognition technology has progressed a lot in recent years, especially when using modern deep learning techniques. While new models such as Facebook AI Research’s wav2vec has achieved 2.43 WER (Word Error Rate) in research benchmark dataset, their performance usually tanks when processing atypical speech, such as, speech by people who stutter, people who are deaf or…
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