Voiceitt, based in Israel, is Amazon Alexa’s portfolio company that was recently successful in raising $10 million dollars to develop a technology to help the impaired. The Viking Maccabee led venture is striving to develop a voice assistant that can help the physically impaired by aiding them in conversing with voice assistants and people by clarifying their speech in real-time. The company is aiming to use the money in further developing the software and incorporating voice into technology.
Voiceitt’s tech’s mission is to build an AI that can comprehend what a person struggling to speak is trying to say. It is going to train an AI in such a way that it can instantly decipher and break the incoherent speech down, to make it more understandable.
The AI shall receive training in terms of the same incomprehensible, unique speech. Voiceitt is going to play the role of basically a translator. It will also breakdown the speech into a more understandable one when the impaired person is trying to converse — acting as a translator.
This is majorly beneficial. Especially during the tough times, when social distancing is a must — Voiceitt can be used by impaired people to make online doctor appointments. It’s exceptionally helpful as the doctors can now understand what the patient is trying to say over digitized communication, than being at a loss.
All the more advantageous if it’s a video or a conference call.
Danny Weissberg, Voiceitt’s co-founder and CEO said in a statement, “Voiceitt provides a new dimension of independence and quality of life for people with speech and motor disabilities, and a compelling tool for those who care for and about them.
With the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, our objectives are not only to support the individual’s in-person communication but also to assist healthcare professionals and support the continuum of care for their patients.”
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Sara Smolley, Voiceitt’s co-founder and executive producer said, “As we continue our growth, we are committed to our mission of making speech accessible to all. Our long-term vision is to integrate Voiceitt’s customizable speech recognition with mainstream voice technologies to enable environmental control through a universally accessible voice system. Voiceitt’s versatile technology can be applied in a range of voice-enabled applications in diverse contexts and environments.”
The eight-year-old start-up company has now garnered over $15 million and has an employee base of 25 people. Voiceitt was also a part of the Amazon Accelerator Program back in 2018 and helped in Alexa Fund investment.
However, the recent fundings are coming from non-profits like AARP and The Disability Opportunity Fund and also venture capital groups including Cahn Capital, Microsoft’s M12, AMIT Technion, and Connecticut Innovations.
It is already collaborating with health institutes, speech therapists, the Department of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities of Tennessee.
Voiceitt isn’t the only company trying to build a technology to help the impaired and people with disabilities. Other start-up companies like Open Style Lab and K4Connect also closed a $21 million funding round.
They are basically working on augmented voice-enabled technology for people with disabilities to benefit from. In the meantime, Alexa recently launched its accessibility hub to showcase how accessible it is, and Google is already trying to make Google Assistant more accessible.
It rolled out a visual context to the Voice Access feature in Android, and Voice Cues in Google Maps. The latter guides and navigates in the right direction for the visually impaired.
It also has one single button called Action Blocks which can trigger a trail of tasks upon clicking. The tech giant is a major rival of Voiceitt, however, Voiceitt has now collected enough to set its venture forth.
