Introduction to Speech Recognition

This course is a critical first step for everyone involved in the development and deployment of speech applications. Even if you know something about speech systems, it is designed to fill in the blanks to ensure a solid foundation for all members of a speech team.

The course explains how speech recognition works. It presents and defines the various terms and acronyms so common in the industry today. It describes the components of speech system architecture so management as well as operations and support staff understand the critical parts of the whole. It clarifies how each component interacts within the speech environment and with other web technologies. It introduces and defines controlling design principles critical for creating successful speech applications, underscoring the intimate correlation between user interface design and grammar development and tuning--information that all speech team members need.

Overall, the focus of this class is to ensure that everyone on the team has a fundamental understanding of complex speech elements, so that each member can build on that to gain skills necessary for their discrete responsibilities.

• Discuss the basic concepts of speech
• Describe the speech recognition process
• Explain the importance of caller experience to the success of speech-enabled IVRs
• Distinguish key elements of recognition including Grammars, Dictionaries, and Acoustic Models
• Identify the basic hardware and software components within a basic speech architecture
• List key criteria for measuring the success of speech applications
• Discuss additional application for ASR technology including text-to-speech, biometric verification, dictation, etc.

1. About Speech

2. The Caller Experience

3. The Science of Speech

4. The Software Architecture

5. Application Performance

6. Specialized Users for Speech Recognition Technology