Speech control of assistive devices for the physically disabled

Automatic speech recognition is being increasingly employed for man-to-machine communication; and the physically disabled appear to be one class of users who could benefit particularly from the new technology. In this paper, the potential of speech recognition to aid disabled people is reviewed and assessed. Applications to mobility, robotics, environmental control and computer access are considered. Two specific applications, viz. environmental control and computerised text processing, are especially attractive and have formed the focus of extensive work at Southampton.