Artificial intelligence (AI) could soon offer more help to those with speech disabilities. Big tech companies are partnering with the University of Illinois to form the Speech Accessibility Project to upgrade AI's understanding of people with disabilities or unusual speech patterns. The project will gather a set of high-quality, diverse speech samples that will help improve speech technologies. "Being able to devise new interventions and screening tools will help us be more proactive in early detection of conditions in children and help us customize more specific therapies for a patient's condition," Karen Panetta, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Tufts University and an IEEE Fellow, who is not involved in the project, told Lifewire in an email interview. Speech recognition, found in many software programs and voice assistants, has become a part of many people's everyday lives.

Do you ever feel as if your voice assistants – whether Siri, Alexa, or Google – don't understand you? You might repeat your question a little slower, a little louder, but eventually you'll get the information you were asking for read back to you in the pleasing but lifeless tones of your voice-activated assistant. That's the question facing many of the 3 million people in the United States who stutter, plus the thousands of others who have impaired speech not limited to stuttering, and many are feeling left out. "When this stuff first started coming out, I was all over it," said Jacquelyn Joyce Revere, a screenwriter from Los Angeles who stutters. "In LA, I need GPS all the time, so this seemed like a more convenient way to live the life I want to live."

In Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, there are over 5 million children with some form of disability. With the right support, many of these can thrive in mainstream education. As a result, up to 75 percent of these children are excluded from quality education. The situation is made even more difficult when resources are stretched to begin with. In Romania, a country which has the second highest teacher-to-student ratio in Europe, it can be difficult for children with disabilities to get the specific support they need to thrive, whether that's in or out of the classroom.

In Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, there are over 5 million children with some form of disability. With the right support, many of these can thrive in mainstream education. As a result, up to 75 percent of these children are excluded from quality education.

When Whitney Bailey bought an Amazon Echo, she wanted to use the hands-free calling feature in case she fell and couldn't reach her phone. She hoped that it would offer her family some peace of mind and help make life a little easier. In some ways, she says, it does. But because she has cerebral palsy, her voice is strained when she talks, and she struggles to get Alexa to understand her. To make matters worse, having to repeat commands strains her voice even more.