Apple and stuttering, two terms already associated, and the last time it was not necessarily in a positive way. But this time, the outcome of this combination should be beneficial since it can give a helping hand to the 80 million people affected by stuttering in the world, as long as they use a voice assistant.
Siri soon more attentive?
Indeed, the Siri, Alexa and other assistants lack tolerance in the face of these speech problems: either they do not understand the words, or they no longer listen to the user who has not had time to scroll his sentence. A researcher working on accessibility features at Apple, Colin Lea published a study in March 2023 explaining the changes to be made to Apple's voice recognition algorithm -used by Siri- so that it adapts to people who stutter.
The tests conducted for the study were conclusive, with a 79% reduction in interruptions of "too long" sentences and a word recognition rate improved by 10 to 25%. It remains to be seen when Apple will implement these improvements in Siri, although we doubt it will be to much fanfare.
