Patent ID: 7295982

Claim:
A method for verifying that a message received from a user is intelligible, comprising: measuring a speech level of a received user's message; determining whether the measured speech level of the message is below a pre-determined speech level threshold; measuring a signal-to-noise ratio of the user's message; determining whether the measured signal-to-noise ratio of the message is below a pre-determined signal-to-noise ratio threshold; calculating an estimate of intelligibility for the user's message; determining whether the calculated estimate of intelligibility is below an intelligibility threshold by: determining whether any portion of the user's message contains important information; recognizing the portion of the user's message that contains the important information; calculating the estimate of intelligibility for the recognized portion of the user's message that contains the important information, wherein the estimate of intelligibility indicates the degree to which the recognized important information is intelligible; comparing the calculated estimate of intelligibility for the recognized portion of the user's message that contains the important information with the intelligibility threshold; and if the calculated estimate of intelligibility for the recognized portion of the user's message that contains the important information is below the intelligibility threshold, prompting the user to repeat the portion of the user's message determined to contain the important information; and prompting the user to repeat at least a portion of the message if any of the measured speech level, measured signal-to-noise ratio and calculated estimate of intelligibility of the user's message are determined to be below their respective thresholds.