ALS Residence Initiative (ALSRI)

Yesterday, the Steve Saling ALS Residence and the Dapper McDonald ALS Residence at the Leonard Florence Center for Living hosted a group of Google researchers and engineers who have been collaborating with ALS TDI on their Precision Medicine Program (https://www.als.net/precision-medicine). In particular, they are working on improving the communication and computer input options with voice recognition. Before you think voice recognition would help very few pALS, consider that if a computer can translate Mandarin Chinese, then machine learning can make it possible to translate an ALS accent the same way a loved one learns to translate pALS long after everyone else hears gibberish. And because the machine is learning, your computer may maintain its accuracy as the speech deteriorates up to a point. This group of geniuses from Google hope they can improve communication and computer access for a great number of people. If you are interested in helping Google do their research, complete this short form expressing your interest bit.ly/AudioData. I did. Cheers.

Google speech recognition project interest form Our goal with this project is to explore how Google products and services that use speech as an input method could work better for more users. If you’re interested in hearing more about a data collection effort organized by Google to improve the accuracy of automatic speech recognition methods for...

Please check out the brand new www.ALSRI.org. In addition to finally being mobile friendly, there is a new section with my advice for the newly diagnosed and other frequently asked questions like architectural advice and tips on flying with a power chair. I have been working on it for months so I hope you like the new look.

ALS Residence Initiative (ALSRI) The ALS Residence Initiative (ALSRI) is a project to provide people with ALS and other debilitating conditions an environment where they can live vital and productive lives with meaningful freedom and independence.