We present a novel and general approach for fast and efficient non-sequential browsing of sound in large archives that we know little or nothing about, e.g. so called found data - data not recorded with the specific purpose to be analysed or used as training data. Our main motivation is to address some of the problems speech and speech technology researchers see when they try to capitalise on the huge quantities of speech data that reside in public archives. Our method is a combination of audio browsing through massively multi-object sound environments and a well-known unsupervised dimensionality reduction algorithm (SOM). We test the process chain on four data sets of different nature (speech, speech and music, farm animals, and farm animals mixed with farm sounds). The methods are shown to combine well, resulting in rapid and readily interpretable observations. Finally, our initial results are demonstrated in prototype software which is freely available.

Speech data found in the wild hold many advantages over artificially constructed speech corpora in terms of ecological validity and cultural worth. Perhaps most importantly, there is a lot of it. However, the combination of great quantity, noisiness and variation poses a challenge for its access and processing. Generally speaking, automatic approaches to tackle the problem require good labels for training, while manual approaches require time. In this study, we provide further evidence for a semi-supervised, human-in-the-loop framework that previously has shown promising results for browsing and annotating large quantities of found audio data quickly. The findings of this study show that a 100-hour long subset of the Fearless Steps corpus can be annotated for speech activity in less than 45 minutes, a fraction of the time it would take traditional annotation methods, without a loss in performance.

The use of speech as an interaction modality has grown considerably through the integration of Intelligent Personal Assistants (IPAs- e.g. Siri, Google Assistant) into smartphones and voice based devices (e.g. Amazon Echo). However, there remain significant gaps in using theoretical frameworks to understand user behaviours and choices and how they may applied to specific speech interface interactions. This part-day multidisciplinary workshop aims to critically map out and evaluate theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches across a number of disciplines and establish directions for new paradigms in understanding speech interface user behaviour. In doing so, we will bring together participants from HCI and other speech related domains to establish a cohesive, diverse and collaborative community of researchers from academia and industry with interest in exploring theoretical and methodological issues in the field.

Speech interfaces are growing in popularity. Through a review of 99 research papers this work maps the trends, themes, findings and methods of empirical research on speech interfaces in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI). We find that studies are usability/theory-focused or explore wider system experiences, evaluating Wizard of Oz, prototypes or developed systems. Measuring task and interaction was common, as was using self-report questionnaires to measure concepts like usability and user attitudes. A thematic analysis of the research found that speech HCI work focuses on nine key topics: system speech production, design insight, modality comparison, experiences with interactive voice response systems, assistive technology and accessibility, user speech production, using speech technology for development, peoples' experiences with intelligent personal assistants and how user memory affects speech interface interaction. From these insights we identify gaps and challenges in speech research, notably taking into account technological advancements, the need to develop theories of speech interface interaction, grow critical mass in this domain, increase design work and expand research from single to multiple user interaction contexts so as to reflect current use contexts. We also highlight the need to improve measure reliability, validity and consistency, in the wild deployment and reduce barriers to building fully functional speech interfaces for research.

We demonstrate a method and a set of open source tools (beta) for nonsequential browsing of large amounts of audio data. The demonstration will contain versions of a set of functionalities in their first stages, and will provide a good insight in how the method can be used to browse through large quantities of audio data efficiently.

We introduce an expanded version of the Swedish research resource Språkbanken (the Swedish Language Bank). In 2018, Språkbanken, which has supported national and international research for over four decades, adds two branches, one focusing on speech and one on societal aspects of language, to its existing organization, which targets text. 

Child-directed spoken data is the ideal source of support for claims about children's linguistic environments. However, phonological transcriptions of child-directed speech are scarce, compared to sources like adult-directed speech or text data. Acquiring reliable descriptions of children's phonological environments from more readily accessible sources would mean considerable savings of time and money. The first step towards this goal is to quantify the reliability of descriptions derived from such secondary sources. We investigate how phonological distributions vary across different modalities (spoken vs. written), and across the age of the intended audience (children vs. adults). Using a previously unseen collection of Swedish adult-and child-directed spoken and written data, we combine lexicon look-up and graphemeto-phoneme conversion to approximate phonological characteristics. The analysis shows distributional differences across datasets both for single phonemes and for longer phoneme sequences. Some of these are predictably attributed to lexical and contextual characteristics of text vs. speech. The generated phonological transcriptions are remarkably reliable. The differences in phonological distributions between child-directed speech and secondary sources highlight a need for compensatory measures when relying on written data or on adult-directed spoken data, and/or for continued collection of actual child-directed speech in research on children's language environments.

In 2014, the Swedish government tasked a Swedish agency, The Swedish Post and Telecom Authority (PTS), with investigating how to best create and populate an infrastructure for spoken language resources (Ref N2014/2840/ITP). As a part of this work, the department of Speech, Music and Hearing at KTH Royal Institute of Technology have taken inventory of existing potential spoken language resources, mainly in Swedish national archives and other governmental or public institutions. In this position paper, key priorities, perspectives, and strategies that may be of general, rather than Swedish, interest are presented. We discuss broad types of potential spoken language resources available; to what extent these resources are free to use; and thirdly the main contribution: strategies to ensure the continuous acquisition of spoken language resources in a manner that facilitates speech and speech technology research.