Automatic speech recognition

Technology that converts spoken language into text using machine learning and signal processing. ASR powers live captioning, voice assistants, and dictation software, making it a key accessibility technology for deaf and hard of hearing users who benefit from real-time captions. However, current ASR systems often perform poorly with accented speech, disordered speech, background noise, and technical vocabulary, creating accessibility barriers for the very populations they could most benefit. Best practice is to treat ASR output as a first pass that requires human review to meet WCAG captioning accuracy standards.