Do you have a speech impairment? Can’t talk to Alexa or Siri? Read this!

I am one of many Americans who has a speech impairment due to a disability since I was 4 months old. I’ve always kept up with upcoming technology since I first got into computers back in 1984. But one area that I felt left out in is with voice assistants such as Alexa, Siri, etc.

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When Siri for iOS and the Mac first came out, I immediately knew that this was one area of the computer field I wouldn’t be able to get into. I felt the same way when Amazon Alexa came out.

All Voice Assistants work virtually the same way. When someone speaks into a Mic, it uses algorithms to try and find out what a person is saying. This is somewhat easy with persons without speech impairments because they seem to say a word in almost the same way. This could not be true with some persons who is speech impaired, as they seem to say the same word in different ways. Think of saying the word “there” or “their”. Two words that sound the same but have two different meanings.

Over the years, I’ve compared two of the most popular voice assistance – Alexa and Siri – over the past six months, this is what I have found.

Amazon Alexa – The stand alone Alexa devices where one has to say “Alexa….” before a command is not that good at recognizing someone who has a speech impairment because of the inability to say the word “Alexa” (or other activation words) to start an interaction. However, when Alexa is activated by a touch of a button (such as with an Amazon Fire TV Remote) Alexa seems to do better at understanding me. I say such words as “open YouTubeTV”, “What is the weather?” and it does what I ask.
Apple’s Siri – This voice assistant and I do not get along well at all. No matter what I ask it, such as “Call dad” or “open Mail” Siri either ignores me, or does something way off of what I ask. I have tried to train Siri with the built-in trainer, but that always fails due to the long sentences that one has to say during the training process.

I have not tried Google Assistant yet.

If you’re a non verbal person, there are text-to-speech apps available to assist you in using voice assistances for Android, iOS, Mac, and Windows.

In closing, let me just say this – there is hope for persons with speech impairments who want to get in to the voice assistant realm. We should be writing to these companies who make VAs and remind them that there are people who are without perfect speech due to reasons beyond our control.

What do YOU think? Let’s talk about this subject below.