William Ricardo Rodríguez

Bio: William Ricardo Rodríguez is an academic researcher from University of Zaragoza. The author has contributed to research in topics: Speech processing & Speech technology. The author has an hindex of 6, co-authored 14 publications receiving 188 citations. Previous affiliations of William Ricardo Rodríguez include Del Rosario University.

E-inclusion technologies for the speech handicapped

Abstract: This paper addresses the problem that disabled people face when accessing the new systems and technologies that are available nowadays. The use of speech technologies, specially helpful for motor handicapped people, becomes unapproachable when these people also suffer speech impairments, making the gap in the society wider for them. As a way to include speech impaired people in the technological society of today, two lines of work have been carried out. On one hand, a computer-aided speech therapy software has been developed for the speech training of children with different disabilities. This tool, available for free distribution, makes use of different state-of-the-art speech technologies to train different levels of the language. As a result of this work, the software is being used currently in several centers for special education with a very encouraging feedback about the capabilities of the system. On the other hand, research on the use of automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems for the speech impaired has been carried out. This work has focused on current techniques of speaker adaptation to know how these techniques, fruitfully used in other tasks, can deal with this specific kind of speech. The use of Maximum A Posterior (MAP) obtains an improvement of 60.61% compared to the results of a baseline speaker independent model.

COMUNICA - tools for speech and language therapy.

Abstract: This paper introduces the systems and technologies used for the development of computer-aided speech and language therapy tools. These tools (“Pre-Lingua”, “Vocaliza” and “Cuentame”) aim to help speech and language disabled people to improve their communication abilities, covering all the processes in the acquisition of the spoken language (from phonation and articulation to descriptive and comprehensive language). The applications are conceived with the idea of supplying an easy interface for speech therapy in any language, although focusing on the needs of speech therapists in Spain and Latin America. One of the key points in the applications is the possibility of automating the process of speech therapy thus the child who is under therapy can run it in an unsupervised way after a short time configuration done by the speech therapist. These tools require some improvements in Speech Technologies such as Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and pronunciation verification in order to help users to improve their communication skills.

Formant estimation in children's speech and its application for a Spanish speech therapy tool.

Abstract: This paper addresses the problem of how to estimate reliable formant frequencies in high-pitched speech (typical in children), and how to normalize these estimations, independent from vocal tract shape or length. The normalized formant frequencies are used to improve the performance of a ComputerAided Speech Therapy Tool (CASTT) in Spanish. For this purpose, a study was conducted to see what is the relationship between child’s height and their vocal tract length, using traditional technologies in speech processing like linear prediction LPC, homomorphic analysis and modeling of the vocal tract. Results of this study show a high correlation between child’s height and their vocal tract length. The study is based on speech from 235 healthy children (110 females and 125 males) which contains Spanish vowels utterances, and enables calibration of a CASTT system for children with speech disorders.