Most speech recognition systems have been designed for adult users, whose voices and speech behaviors are very different from kids. To work accurately for kids, voice technology needs to be designed uniquely with them in mind. Here’s why:
Physically, kids have a thinner, shorter vocal tract and smaller vocal folds, and their larynx has not fully developed, so they can’t always enunciate words properly.
Kids won’t modify their speech or speaking behavior to be understood. They elongate, overpronounce, and over punctuate words. They also shout, whisper, and sing!
Kids’ environments tend to be much noisier than those of adults. Their voices are  often competing with the ambient noise of other kids, TVs, ovens and dishwashers, TVs and classrooms.
Kids’ privacy needs are different and much more expansive than adults’. Their data needs to be protected so that it can never be individually identifiable, used to create a unique user profile, shared or sold to third parties, or use collected data for marketing or advertising purposes.
Get started today to learn more about SoapBox’s speech recognition software for children and to tell us about your use case for voice.