Glossary

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Deaf Speech(also: Deaf Accent, Deaf Voice)

Accented speech produced by many individuals who are deaf or significantly hard of hearing, resulting from incomplete acoustic feedback from their own voices. Because deaf speakers cannot fully hear themselves, their speech patterns often differ from those of hearing speakers in…

Dysarthric Speech(also: Dysarthria)

Dysarthric speech is speech that is affected by dysarthria, a motor speech disorder resulting from neurological injury or conditions that affect the muscles used for speech production. Characteristics include imprecise articulation, irregular speech rate, abnormal pitch and…

Echolalia(also: Echoing, Echolalic Speech)

The repetition or echoing of words, phrases, or sounds spoken by others, commonly observed in individuals with autism spectrum disorder and some other developmental conditions. Echolalia can be immediate (repeating something just heard) or delayed (repeating something heard…

Electrolarynx(also: Artificial Larynx, Electric Larynx, EL Device)

A handheld battery-powered device that produces mechanical vibrations to generate speech for people who have lost their larynx (voice box), typically due to laryngeal cancer surgery. The device is held against the neck or cheek, where it transmits vibrations through the tissue…

Hyperarticulation(also: Clear Speech, Over-Articulation)

A speaking style in which a person exaggerates the clarity of their pronunciation by moving their tongue and mouth to more extreme positions, producing more distinct vowel and consonant sounds. Hyperarticulation occurs naturally when speakers perceive that their listener is…

Jitter and Shimmer(also: Voice perturbation measures, Cycle-to-cycle variability)

Acoustic measures of voice quality that capture short-term irregularity in the vocal fold vibration. Jitter is the cycle-to-cycle variability in pitch (fundamental frequency), while shimmer is the cycle-to-cycle variability in amplitude. Elevated jitter and shimmer are…

Laryngectomy(also: Larynx Removal, Voice Box Removal)

A surgical procedure to remove all or part of the larynx (voice box), most commonly performed as treatment for laryngeal cancer. Total laryngectomy removes the entire larynx and separates the airway from the mouth, nose, and esophagus, requiring the person (called a…

Macroglossia(also: Enlarged Tongue)

A condition characterized by an abnormally large tongue relative to the oral cavity, commonly associated with Down syndrome and certain other genetic conditions. Macroglossia affects speech production by altering articulation, particularly for sounds requiring precise tongue…

Prosody(also: Speech Prosody, Intonation Patterns)

The patterns of stress, rhythm, intonation, and timing in speech that convey meaning beyond the literal words. Prosody communicates emotions, emphasis, questions versus statements, sarcasm, and conversational cues like turn-taking signals. For AAC users relying on text-to-speech…

Self-Voicing Interface(also: Self-Voicing, Self-Voicing Application)

A software application or interface that includes its own built-in speech output capability, rather than relying on a separate screen reader to interpret and voice its content. Self-voicing interfaces generate speech directly, giving them greater control over what is spoken and…

Silent Speech(also: Silent Speech Interface, SSI)

Communication technologies that generate intelligible speech from non-acoustic signals produced during the intent or attempt to speak, without requiring audible voicing. Input modalities include surface electromyography of articulatory muscles, ultrasound tongue imaging,…

Speaker-dependent speech recognition(also: User-adapted ASR, Personalized speech recognition)

A speech recognition approach that trains or adapts its acoustic models to a specific individual's voice characteristics, rather than relying solely on general population models. For people with cognitive disabilities, dysarthria, or other speech differences, speaker-dependent…

Speaking Behavior(also: Speaker Behavior, Speech Behavior)

In accessibility and HCI research, the observable communicative behaviors a speaker exhibits during conversation — including speech rate, voice intensity (loudness), articulation clarity (including hyperarticulation or over-enunciation), eye contact, gesturing, and pausing.…

Speech Input(also: Voice input, Voice control, Speech recognition input)

An input method that allows users to control devices or enter text by speaking rather than using manual touch or keyboard input. Speech input is particularly important for people with visual impairments, who use it significantly more often than sighted users to overcome the…

Speech Synthesis Markup Language(also: SSML)

Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) is a W3C standard XML-based markup language for controlling the rendering of synthetic speech by text-to-speech (TTS) engines. SSML provides tags for specifying pronunciation, volume, pitch, speaking rate, emphasis, pauses, and voice…

Voice banking(also: Voice preservation, Speech banking)

The process of recording and storing samples of a person's natural voice so that a synthetic version can be created for future use with text-to-speech systems. Voice banking is particularly important for people with degenerative conditions like ALS or motor neuron disease who…

Web Speech API(also: Web Speech, SpeechSynthesis API)

A browser-native JavaScript API that provides speech recognition and speech synthesis capabilities directly within web applications. The Web Speech API enables developers to add text-to-speech and voice recognition features without requiring users to install screen reader…

Whispered Speech(also: Whisper, Whispering)

A mode of speech production in which the vocal folds do not vibrate periodically; sound is generated by turbulent airflow through a narrow glottal opening. Whispered speech lacks a fundamental frequency and carries lower acoustic energy, which makes it harder for humans and for…

18 results.