Project description
A multilingual app to improve children’s reading skills
Despite literacy being a fundamental skill, 2 in 10 children in the EU continue to struggle with reading. Disadvantaged and immigrant children face even greater difficulties, lagging further behind in their reading skills. The urgency to address this problem is heightened by the fact that multilingualism is increasingly vital in our globalised world. The EU-funded SpeechTech4Literacy project aims to use speech technology to revolutionise digital literacy and language learning apps. By enabling these apps to listen and assess children as they read aloud, the project will provide real-time feedback and personalised guidance to enhance reading and language skills. SpeechTech4Literacy platform is designed specifically for children. While currently available only in English, the project plans to expand its platform to 13 languages.
Objective
Literacy is a foundational skill, yet 20% of EU children have difficulty reading, unchanged over the past decade. This problem is more serious for disadvantaged and immigrant children, who lag even further behind in reading skills. Multilingualism is both a needed and desired skill across the globe.
Speech technology has the potential to be a game changer by voice enabling digital literacy and language learning apps to ‘listen’ (and assess) as the child reads aloud, providing the child individual real-time feedback to rapidly improve reading and language skills and track student progress and difficulties.
Adult speech technology systems don’t work for children and existing commercial systems for children are predominantly English and only work in quiet ‘lab-like’ environments, severely limiting their real-world use. SoapBox Labs (SBL) has developed a children's speech assessment platform for real-world conditions such as homes and schools and made the platform available for open license into 3rd party digital learning products, maximising potential for market penetration and impact.
Our ambition is to extend our existing English platform, scaling to 13 languages by 2022 and targeting a global market of 187M children, €3B opportunity.
SBL closed a €1.2M fundraise in Jan 17 and has received widespread support from leading academics, educators and industry stakeholders. SBL’s innovations will have a positive impact on children (through robust, widely accessible and affordable products), industry stakeholders (opening new product channels for education publishers, EdTech companies and developers) and SBL (international expansion with estimated revenues of €33M in 2022; 83 direct/indirect jobs).
The project provides a major achievable step toward raising stagnant EU children’s literacy levels, reaching children no matter where they are, on everyday consumer mobile devices, opening a portal to learning and empowerment, particularly for the most vulnerable.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- humanities languages and literature linguistics
- social sciences educational sciences didactics
- social sciences economics and business business and management business models
- natural sciences computer and information sciences artificial intelligence machine learning deep learning
- natural sciences computer and information sciences artificial intelligence computational intelligence
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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H2020-EU.2.1.1. - INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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H2020-EU.2.3.1. - Mainstreaming SME support, especially through a dedicated instrument
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) H2020-SMEInst-2016-2017
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
8 DUBLIN
Ireland
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.