Expressive Communication Technologies for People with ALS

April 20, 2017 ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) is a degenerative neuromuscular disease; people with late-stage ALS typically retain cognitive function, but lose the motor ability to speak, relying on gaze-controlled AAC (augmentative and alternative communication) devices for interpersonal interactions. State-of-the-art AAC technologies used by people with ALS do not facilitate natural communication; gaze-based AAC communication is extremely slow, and the resulting synthesized speech is flat and robotic. This lecture presents a series of novel technology prototypes from the Microsoft Research Enable team that aim to address the challenges of improving the expressivity of AAC for people with ALS. Meredith Ringel Morris Computer Scientist and Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research