Speech AI for All: Promoting Accessibility, Fairness, Inclusivity, and Equity

Trained and optimized for typical and fluent speech, speech AI works poorly for people with speech diversities, often interrupting them and misinterpreting their speech. The increasing deployment of speech AI in automated phone menus, AI-conducted job interviews, and everyday devices poses tangible risks to people with speech diversities. To mitigate these risks, this workshop aims to build a multidisciplinary coalition and set the research agenda for fair and accessible speech AI. Bringing together a broad group of academics and practitioners with diverse perspectives, including HCI, AI, and other relevant fields such as disability studies, speech language pathology, and law, this workshop will establish a shared understanding of the technical challenges for fair and accessible speech AI, as well as its ramifications in design, user experience, policy, and society. In addition, the workshop will invite and highlight first-person accounts from people with speech diversities, facilitating direct dialogues and collaboration between speech AI developers and the impacted communities. The key outcomes of this workshop include a summary paper that synthesizes our learnings and outlines the roadmap for improving speech AI for people with speech diversities, as well as a community of scholars, practitioners, activists, and policy makers interested in driving progress in this domain.