Advancements in assistive speech technologies have revolutionized communication for people with disabilities worldwide, advancing their inclusion in society. Their application for less-resourced languages remains a challenge due to the limited amount of data available for training speech synthesis models. This makes it difficult to ensure adequate representation and inclusion for speakers of these languages. The problem is more pronounced for children who require age-appropriate text-to-speech (TTS) voices to serve as their personal identity in augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) devices. To bridge this gap, the Speech Group at FEEIT, UKIM is spearheading the development of speech synthesis voices. Key achievements include the creation of “Suze,” a free, high-quality TTS voice targeting on-device off-line use, specifically for the Cboard AAC app, but also for screen readers for mobile and PC. Expanding on this success, the team recently developed child voices for Macedonian and other European languages for AAC within the VoiceKids project. Through ongoing research and long-standing partnerships with the assistive technology organizations, we drive regional innovation, ensuring that linguistic barriers do not hinder accessibility or social inclusion in the digital age.
Branislav Gerazov is a professor at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technologies, Ss Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Macedonia. He is the leader of the Speech Group at FEEIT with over 15 years of experience in speech technologies, especially text-to-speech synthesis and automatic speech recognition. He’s authored over 130 scientific papers and published in leading speech tech journals including IEEE TASLP, Speech Communication, and JASA, as well as flagship conferences, such as Interspeech. He has led and participated in 7 international and 4 national research projects, and collaborated with esteemed international organizations including UCL, UK, McGill University, Canada, and Idiap, Switzerland. He was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship to work on prosody modelling at GIPSA-lab, Grenoble-INP, France. Gerazov has also made notable contributions in industry working as an R&D consultant for ListenUp Technologies, Israel, IBH-IMPEX, Germany, ReTell, UK, and Macedonian companies including: Speech AI, Gordian Technologies, ITEK Systems, Analitika, and Sentice. Within his work with industry he has also co-authored a speech processing patent. He has a long-term collaboration in the area of assistive technologies with the Association for assistive technology “Open the Windows”. He has served as the chair of the IEEE Joint Chapter of Signal Processing and Engineering in Medicine and Biology for two full terms, and is now the vice-chair of the Macedonian IEEE Section. His fields of interest include speech technology, and applications of digital signal processing and machine learning to audio and biomedical signals. Branislav is an enthusiast for free software and open science and education.