4th Workshop on Speech and Language Processing for Assistive Technologies

Call for papers: SLPAT 2013

Submission deadline: 3 June (research papers and demo proposals)

We invite you to join us in Grenoble for the 4th annual workshop on Speech and Language Processing for Assistive Technologies. This 2-day workshop will combine research in speech and language technology that assists people with physical, cognitive, sensory, emotional, or developmental disabilities. This year we are introducing a special topic -- Smart Homes and ambient intelligent technology applied to augmentative communication. The program committee is now online at http://www.slpat.org/slpat2013/people.html.

We are also happy to announce that we are now a special group of both the Association for Computational Linguistics and the International Speech Communication Association. We look forward to being a part of both communities.

It is our pleasure to announce that Professor Mark Hawley will be delivering an Invited Lecture on the first day of the workshop. Mark Hawley is Professor of Health Services Research at the University of Sheffield, UK, where he leads the Rehabilitation and Assistive Technology Research Group. He is also Honorary Consultant Clinical Scientist at Barnsley Hospital, where he is Head of Medical Physics and Clinical Engineering. Over the last 20 years, he has worked as a clinician and researcher -- providing, researching, developing and evaluating assistive technology, telehealth and telecare products, and services for disabled people, older people, and people with long-term conditions.

This year’s workshop will include a tour of a smart home at the Laboratoire d'Informatique de Grenoble. This smart home (called "DOMUS", http://domus.imag.fr/) is an environment for researchers working on smart spaces and ambient intelligence. DOMUS is a 40 sq. metre apartment composed of typical rooms (e.g., office, bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen with dining area) and furnishings. The entire apartment is fitted with sensors and actuators and is controlled by a home automation system.

General topics of SLPAT 2013 include but are not limited to:

• Automated processing of sign language
• Speech synthesis and speech recognition for physical or cognitive impairments
• Speech transformation for improved intelligibility
• Speech and Language Technologies for Assisted Living
• Translation systems; to and from speech, text, symbols and sign language
• Novel modeling and machine learning approaches for AAC/AT applications
• Text processing for improved comprehension, e.g., sentence simplification or text-to-speech
• Silent speech: speech technology based on sensors without audio
• Symbol languages, sign languages, nonverbal communication
• Dialogue systems and natural language generation for assistive technologies
• Multimodal user interfaces and dialogue systems adapted to assistive technologies
• NLP for cognitive assistance applications
• Presentation of graphical information for people with visual impairments
• Speech and NLP applied to typing interface applications
• Brain-computer interfaces for language processing applications
• Speech, natural language and multimodal interfaces to assistive technologies
• Assessment of speech and language processing within the context of assistive technology
• Web accessibility; text simplification, summarization, and adapted presentation modes such as speech, signs or symbols
• Deployment of speech and NLP tools in the clinic or in the field
• Linguistic resources; corpora and annotation schemes
• Evaluation of systems and components, including methodology
• Anything included in this year's special topic
• Other topics in Augmentative and Alternative Communication

The special topic this year is smart homes and intelligent companions. Subtopics include:

• Automatic Speech recognition in distant or multi-source environments
• Understanding, modelling or recognition of aged speech
• Speech analysis in the case of elderly with impairments, early recognition of speech capability loss
• Multimodal speech recognition (context-aware ASR)
• Multimodal emotion recognition
• Applications of speech technology (ASR, dialogue, synthesis) for ambient assisted living

This year, SLPAT will be co-located with the 1st Workshop on Affective Social Speech Signals (WASSS, http://wasss-2013.imag.fr/, which takes place on 22 and 23 August 2013). Participation in and submission to both workshops will be facilitated by reduced registration fees for double-registration (rather than registering for both individually), co-ordination of topics on the overlapping day (22 August) to enable participation in both, and common lunch and events combining the two communities.

We look forward to your submissions!