Projects

Universal Liberated Learning - Youth Initiative

Recognizing the need to engage community based stakeholders in ongoing Liberated Learning development, the Liberated Learning Consortium initiated partnerships with four of Canada’s leading National Disability organizations. Through funds from Canada’s Social Development Partnership’s Program (SDPP), Saint Mary’s University, the Learning Disabilities Association of Canada, the Canadian Hard of Hearing Association, the Neil Squire Society, Easter Seals Canada, Trent University, Cambrian College and IBM Research propose to collaboratively develop emerging speech recognition technologies that increase access to information for Canadians with disabilities.

The overarching purpose of these partnerships is to develop speech recognition technologies and techniques that improve information accessibility.  The SDPP funded project encompasses three main objectives:

1. Increasing National Disability Organization (NDO) usage of speech recognition (SR) captioning/transcription technologies.  Each NDO has agreed to increase their internal usage of speech recognition (SR) by exploring a variety of ways to incorporate SR into their daily operations.  They have agreed to advocate usage to their local and regional branches and members.
2. Increasing individual youth access to SR transcription technology.  The project team will recruit students with disabilities in Canadian universities and colleges to test a new Hosted Transcription Service. Those taking part will be given accounts that will allow them to upload recorded lectures (audio or video) and receive SR generated, multimedia transcripts over the internet. Original audio/video will be automatically synchronized with transcribed text, and then used by students to supplement class notes and assist with review. To learn more about the Youth Initiative please visit our project website: www.transcribeyourclass.ca
3. The project team will evaluate the technology’s impact on students with disabilities and investigate various sustainability models to support increased usage in educational environments.  The team will also look to develop transferability strategies that enable other disability organizations / individuals to effectively utilize SR based captioning / transcription technologies.

For Phase I, II, and III project information, visit our Past Projects

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