A cutting edge transcription process and technology revolutionizing the transcription industry.

Project Information

Verbatizer

Grant agreement ID: 808137

DOI

10.3030/808137

Project closed

EC signature date 31 January 2018

Start date 1 January 2018

End date 30 April 2018

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

VERBIT SOFTWARE LTD
Israel

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Verbatizer (A cutting edge transcription process and technology revolutionizing the transcription industry.)

Reporting period: 2018-01-01 to 2018-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

In today’s business environment, an endless string of meetings, interviews, conferences and seminars are being conducted. There are also several events from the entertainment industry taking place. In these scenarios, deaf people often lack access to information, and this can be considered as indirect discrimination. Recording of the communications is needed for many purposes, such as for legal requirements (e.g. in courtrooms), medical records, or educational for further analysis and review, or to facilitate social equality of disabled people. In the transcription industry, there has been great improvements in recent years, switching from dictation speech recognition to conversation speech recognition. However, there are still weaknesses in current technologies that have to be addressed, such as low accuracy and long turn-around time.
VerbIT’s unique transcription solution uses a combination of AI technologies to achieve accuracy and speed, at a scale large enough to make the world’s audio and video content accessible. VerbIT's AI keeps getting better every time we use it.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the feasibility assessment, VerbIT has completed a full analysis of the technical and business potential of Verbatizer. Throughout the project, VerbIT has greatly expanded their knowledge regarding the regulatory approval required for the European market launch. The feasibility study showed that Verbatizer is viable technically and commercially, determining the business project to be a profitable investment.
Europe-wide policies also promote products that support more convenient living and inclusion e.g. the European Accessibility Act is meant to ensure the full participation of people with disabilities in society, which plays in favor for a company like VerbIT providing services enabling inclusion to people with hearing loss. Multi-country trials were defined with the key objective of demonstrating the effectiveness and efficacy of Verbatizer. Following the results of the trials, VerbIT will communicate them, in order to attract more customers.
VerbIT analysed in detail the go-to-market strategy and the customer segments to define the approach for accelerated and effective market uptake. The company selected UK, Ireland, Spain, France, Germany and Israel as the primary markets to target. Considering the result of the feasibility assessment, it is worthy to follow up with the implementation of an industrialization and commercialization plan. The Phase 2 SME Instrument funding has been identified as a suitable funding solution. The overall vision of VerbIT’s management team is to deliver Verbatizer to European countries by 2021. The SME Instrument would provide the Company with the necessary resources to complete the last close-to-market activities within a well-defined timeframe.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Current ASR engines for automated assistants can only reach up to high levels of accuracy, even above 90%. This is because they respond to a known single user, the tasks they can complete are very constrained and they may ask for clarification and most importantly, these tasks do not require a verbatim transcript of the speech; these applications will work as long as the gist of the speaker’s intent is captured. In contrast, captioning/transcription is much more challenging. Transcription is primarily characterized by long-form content where the speaker is completely unknown and where it is essential to transcribe each and every word that is spoken. Verbatizer is disrupting this market offering the best value for money by offering unparalleled accuracy while allowing saves in time and operational costs.

In the EU alone, the number of people with hearing loss is more than 55 million. In todays’ professional market, the obstacles that people with disabilities face in their everyday life are well known: they are at high risk of becoming unemployed and remaining unemployed, drifting into long term unemployment. VerbIT is promoting the active inclusion and full participation of deaf people in society. Verbatizer will allow to transcribe meetings, training courses, patient´s diagnostics and any day to day task in, schools, hospitals and any other industry, facilitating access to information for deaf people and promoting societal equality. This will help Europe to secure its future prosperity, its infrastructure and its social systems by facilitating a labour market capable of accommodating the contribution of all, including deaf people.

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