Subtle Subtitles - iPhone App

We had a meeting of the East of Scotland Branch of Ataxia UK this afternoon (I am the secretary). It was a really good turnout -our best for a long time, with 20 people, 8 of whom have ataxia and 9 are relatives / carers. One member even travelled by train from Glasgow to attend, in her powered wheelchair.

This is Calum Pringle, whose Mum has late onset cerebellar ataxia. He is currently finishing his honors in Interactive Media Design at Dundee University, and his project, called 'Subtle Subtitles' is to design a prototype of a wearable display used to help adults with Ataxic Dysphonia (or Dysarthria) to communicate. Ataxians typically have problems with their speech and it is very frustrating for them when people cannot understand them. Calum's design, which he demonstrated, is an iPhone App which recognises ataxic speech and displays the key words on the iPhone screen. His Mum has been 'training' the software to understand her and is already having a lot of success using it. It's based on the Nuance product 'Dragon Naturally Speaking' but involves setting up the vocabulary from scratch.

The design, which everyone was very excited about, is a scarf with a built in pocket for the iPhone. When the display is turned off, the design matches the scarf pattern and colour. It's got great potential for people with all kinds of speech disorders who want something to 'bridge the gap' between speaking for themselves and relying on an artifical voice.

If anyone wants more information on Ataxia, please visit our branch website or the Ataxia UK main site

Calum's website is at http://www.freecalum.co.uk

NB Our Branch website needs a redesign, which I will get around to one of these days, and I've also been a bit lax updating it :-(