Anyone have any experience with Voiceitt or tablet clamps? Any advice on using voice control tech?

jamestalbotw

Hi guys, hoping everyone is having a lovely day. 

I am looking for advice and suggestions on helping a client I work with who has quite severe cerebral palsy. His speech is mild but mobility is severe, he can use his finger to press buttons but not with fine accuracy. 

I am hoping to get his home set up with smart devices but we have bought an alexa that doesnt pick up his voice. I know there is software called Voiceitt but I was hoping to maybe gets some tips and advice on what we would need and what we can do.

Does anyone have any experience with voiceitt? 

I think we might need and ipad/ipod and a tablet clamp. I dont know anything about the clamps so any information there would be great too. 

Thanks for your time.

James

Ross_Alumni

Hello @jamestalbotw

Welcome to the community, I hope you are well.

Sorry to hear of the challenges your client is going through, smart speakers certainly can become more accessible in this regard and I hope that happens soon. 

I found this article about the application, Voiceit, that you mentioned, and it seems as though it is only available on the Apple Store, so yes you would need an Apple device to download it. I imagine that it would just be a case of installing the app and then linking it with your Amazon account and speaker.

I use the Google smart speakers, and they do have a setting on there that lets you adjust the sensitivity of the speaker to your voice, essentially making it easier for it to understand the wake word. After a quick look, I don't think Alexa offers such a feature.

Furthermore, Google have been working on some software to help those who may have difficulty getting the assistant to understand them, so it might be worth keeping an eye on the Google speakers as well as the Alexa ones. You might find that one is better than the other in terms of accessibility.

I note what you say about his accuracy when pressing buttons, but I just also wanted to mention that you can control a lot of your smart speaker's features through the companion app, and it can greatly reduce the number of times you need to actually speak with it. You can set up routines, which are designed to carry outa series of actions upon one tap or command, for example you could get it to tell you the weather, and then straight afterwards tell you the news. You can read about routines on Alexa on this page.

Richard_Scope

Hi @jamestabotw
It might be worth you making contact with Products - Smile Smart Technology (smilesmart-tech.com) or Smartbox - Assistive technology for everyone (thinksmartbox.com). Remap - custom made equipment for disabled people might also be able to develop something more bespoke for your client.

jamestalbotw

Hi Richard, 

I didn't see this reply last time I posted. This is very useful I will follow up with the related links.

Cheers