Aditi Sharma Grover

HIV health information access using spoken dialogue systems: Touchtone vs. speech

This paper presents our work in the design of a SDS for the provision of health information to caregivers of HIV positive children. We specifically address the frequently debated question of input modality in speech systems; touchtone versus speech input, in a new context of low literacy users and a health information service. We discuss our experiences and fieldwork which includes needs assessment interviews, focus group sessions, and user studies in Botswana with semi and low-literate users. Our results indicate user preference for touchtone over speech input although both systems were comparable in performance based on objective metrics.

The South African Human Language Technology Audit

Human language technology (HLT) has been identified as a priority area by the South African government. However, despite efforts by government and the research and development (R&D) community, South Africa has not yet been able to maximise the opportunities of HLT and create a thriving HLT industry. One of the key challenges is the fact that there is insufficient codified knowledge about the current South African HLT components, their attributes and existing relationships. Hence a technology audit was conducted for the South African HLT landscape, to create a systematic and detailed inventory of the status of the HLT components across the eleven official languages. Based on the Basic Language Resource Kit (BLaRK) framework Krauwer (ELRA Newslett 3(2), 1998), we used various data collection methods (such as focus groups, questionnaires and personal consultations with HLT experts) to gather detailed information. The South African HLT landscape is analysed using a number of complementary approaches and based on the interpretations of the results, recommendations are made on how to accelerate HLT development in South Africa, as well as on how to conduct similar audits in other countries and contexts.

The Lwazi community communication service: design and piloting of a voice-based information service

We present the design, development and pilot process of the Lwazi Community Communication Service (LCCS), a multilingual automated telephone-based information service. The service acts as a communication and dissemination tool that enables managers at local community centres to broadcast information (e.g. health, employment, social grants) to community workers and the communities they serve. The LCCS allows the recipients to obtain up-to-date, relevant information in a timely and efficient manner, overcoming the obstacles of transportation, time and costs incurred in trying to physically obtain information from the community centres. We discuss our experiences and fieldwork in piloting the LCCS at six locations nationally in the eleven official South African languages. We analyze the usage pattern from the pilot call logs and thereafter discuss the implications of these findings for future projects that design similar automated services for serving rural communities in developing world regions.

An overview of HLTs for South African Bantu languages

South Africa (SA) is one of the few countries in the world that boasts a large number of official languages. Due to the efforts of government and the local research and development (R&D) community (comprising universities, science councils and a few private sector companies) all the official languages are -- to varying degrees -- enabled with regard to human language technology (HLT). We present in this paper the current status of HLTs for a few selected official South African languages, namely isiZulu, Sepedi, Tshivenda and, Xitsonga based on a national HLT audit covering all official languages of South Africa. We discuss the HLT position of the above languages in relation to other official South African languages, and also explore the types of data collections, technology modules and applications currently available in the R&D community for these four languages.

Towards an information ecosystem for animal disease surveillance using voice services

In this paper we introduce a solution for disease surveillance and monitoring in the primary animal health care (PAHC) domain that uses inbound voice-based services and voice- and text-based outbound services for connecting rural veterinarians and livestock owners with a PAHC service provider. We describe our findings from the ongoing pilots, where we found that it is crucial to close the loop between data collection and information dissemination.