AAWAJ : AUGMENTATIVE COMMUNICATION SUPPORT FOR THE VOCALLY IMPAIRED USING NEPALI TEXT-TO-SPEECH
Date
2023-05
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
I.O.E. Pulchowk Campus
Abstract
As of 2016, more than 147,000 of the Nepali population suffer from some variant of speech
or hearing impairments. Similarly, there has been a visible scarcity of reliable Text-to-
Speech (TTS) engines in the context of the Nepali language. Aawaj is a dedicated mobile
application that addresses these impediments to create augmentative communication
support for the vocally impaired populace of Nepal using a Nepali TTS engine. BIt utilizes
vocal features such as timbre, prosody, rhythm, etc., to create a natural-sounding
TTS engine, based on the open-source Tacotron2 TTS architecture published by Google.
Rare conditions such as cerebral palsy, spinal cord injury, muscular dystrophy, and amyotrophic
lateral sclerosis (ALS) have also led to a physical impediment in speech generation
for a large population. This report further proposes an Augmentative and Alternative
Communication (AAC) platform using accessibility features such as text prompt
generation that provides accessibility to the intended populace of this mobile application.
Description
As of 2016, more than 147,000 of the Nepali population suffer from some variant of speech
or hearing impairments. Similarly, there has been a visible scarcity of reliable Text-to-
Speech (TTS) engines in the context of the Nepali language.
Keywords
Speech Impairments,, Text-to-Speech (TTS),, Augmentative Communication Support