Accent Confuses Machines

[xodar]

Devon accent causes problem on RD&E phone system
Tuesday, August 23, 2011


DEVONIAN Brian Evans has raised concerns that the voice recognition system used by the switchboard at the Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital struggles to recognise his strong Westcountry accent.

When callers phone the main switchboard number for the hospital they are asked to verbally communicate which department, service or ward they require.

But his attempts to be transferred to the eye infirmary left him talking to an unknown woman called Sheila.

On another occasion he claims to have spent more than 20 minutes being passed around departments as it could not understand his Devon twang.

And he said that it was adding to the stress of relatives trying to contact the hospital in what is often already a very stressful time.

The hospital, which was one of the last in the country to install such a scheme, said it had been a success — but said they were continuing to monitor and improve the service.

Mr Evans, 50, who lives at the Quay, said: "Unless you speak the Queen's English it cannot understand you. If someone is ill or they have a relative in hospital, they want to speak to a person not a machine.

"It is stupid. When it is about people's health they don't want to be talking to a machine.

"If a relative is phoning up about someone who is not very well it is already a worrying and distressing time but this just makes things even more confusing.

"The Devonian accent can be quite strong, so if they are going to use the system it should be set up and capable of recognising it. But at the moment it doesn't.

"It is crazy. The majority of people who would phone up the RD&E would be from Devon yet you try and get through to a department and, because the machine does not understand our accent, we are sent all over the place."

A spokesman for the Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital said they had "followed the lead" of other major public and commercial sector organisations with the use of the voice recognition telephone service.

They added: "The RD&E greeting message does give the caller the option of talking to an operator. This technology has been universally adopted across the UK with its wide spectrum of accents and for communication with a range of different and complex specialities from hospitals to financial institutions.

"Since we first used this system in 2008 for internal calls we have seen a significant reduction in the volume of basic inquiries having to be dealt with by an operator out of the 15,000 calls coming through each week.

"This extra capacity has enabled our operators to focus on complex and emergency calls, for example for cardiac, medical, security and fire calls across the Trust sites. We want customer experience to be positive and continue to monitor and improve this service."



http://www.thisisexeter.co.uk/Devon-acc ... story.html

[minkwheel]

Actually, I was going to write a comic story here about that very same thing.... thick accents and voice recognition...I'll get to it, and no....Buffybot won't be in it. Some say that's a GOOD thing. ---minkwheel

[Saya]

Something sort of related that this reminds me of, I actually remember hearing from GameSpot about how the Kinect add-on for the Xbox 360 had difficulty registering people of darker skin tones. It was an early build, but it was enough that people started to declare the Kinect was "racist".

[xodar]

One day soon we'll have people thrown in jail because of mistakes made by facial recognition machinery. The authorities will refuse to let them out just as they have at times refused to release those falsely accused of rape despite DNA evidence because, of course, victims neither lie nor make mistakes.
There's no emotional interference in a machine's perceptions but there are hardware flaws. There can be deliberate programming screw-ups.
People have been brought up to see lack of emotion as lack of error or falsehood.....

Personally, I hate dialing some organization or company and having to talk to machines that have to ask a series of questions when a human could instantly grasp the problem and know what to do.

[dale coba]

Personally, I hate dialing some organization or company and having to talk to machines that have to ask a series of questions when a human could instantly grasp the problem and know what to do.

True enough; but I have to think that the phone interface we're talking about is really primitive, along today's accelerating line of graphic-, audio-, and motion interfaces.

The audio only, press # for X user-interface looks pretty damn poor against the new alternatives.
Someone suggested, Steve Jobs' greatest legacy will have been Apps.
Software developers teem in that pool; I see a brighter future for U.I.s.

Even if it's still only audio, they'll want to organize the options with some better thinking;
or no one will want to use that phone service, if they can use a web-based or texting interface.

- Dale Coba