Fact · Accessibility and health
2,000participants
By the end of September 2025, about 2,000 people had submitted recordings to the University of Illinois Speech Accessibility Project, and Microsoft reported 18 to 60 percent accuracy gains from using the data.
Checked against its source on October 16, 2026
In the source's own words
“As of the end of September 2025, about 2,000 participants submitted recordings to the project. Microsoft announced 18% to 60% accuracy gains using our data.”
Speech Accessibility Project, Beckman Institute, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2025, Our progress.
Open the original- What it measures
- The project collects speech from people whose speech is affected by conditions such as ALS, Parkinson's disease, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, stroke, stuttering or hearing loss, and shares it with researchers and companies to make speech recognition work for them.
- What it does not show
- The accuracy gain is Microsoft's own claim reported by the project, without detail on the test set or baseline. Participant counts change as recruitment continues.