Call For Papers - Speech for Social Good Workshop, Interspeech 2022

VR
Vikram Ramanarayanan
Mon, Mar 28, 2022 5:45 PM

Speech for Social Good Workshop https://s4sg-workshop.github.io,
Interspeech 2022

Despite the fact that speech is the most natural form of human
communication, the appeal of speech technologies has been inhibited by
their limited availability and accessibility. Globally, speech
technologies, including recognition and generation, are concentrated in
regions of relative economic stability, which naturally excludes low
resource languages from mainstream research. Even where available, these
systems have biases in gender and accent, and are mostly unusable for
individuals with speech impediments. Further, even though modelling and
data curation are very important in academic circles, deployment and the
challenges thereof in real world scenarios are often not spoken about. As
speech technologies continue to be employed in an increasing number of
application areas - despite the aforementioned shortcomings - we aim to
highlight research that will make speech technologies more inclusive and
useful for all, and believe that this workshop will provide a platform to
address and highlight the social problems of incumbent speech systems.

*** Topics ***

Though we highlight a few topics of interest below, we invite submissions
of any applications of speech technologies to social good:

Bias in Speech Technologies : Identifying and mitigating gender, racial,
and other social biases in speech recognition or generation systems,

Impaired Speech : Developing better ASR, learning aids, and diagnostic
tools for individuals with speech impediments or other medical conditions,

Support for seniors : synthesis and dialog systems that address the
unique challenges brought on by age,

Improving speech intelligibility : better synthesis systems for
hearing-impaired individuals,

Low Resource Languages : Developing data efficient systems for low
resource languages, low resource data collection and curation,
challenges in building such systems, challenges in collecting low resource
data, case studies in low-resource languages,

Affective computing : ASR systems for emotion recognition, and
synthesis/dialog systems for positive human-computer interaction,
identifying signs of depression and other mental health conditions,

Challenges of Speech for Social Good : research and survey papers
highlighting the challenges of designing such systems, privacy and ethical
concerns, identifying and preventing potential misuse of speech systems,

Social good, justice, equity : surveys on demographic usage of speech
technologies including identification of most typical user types, and which
groups are currently most disadvantaged by these systems, how speech
systems can be used to challenge the existing power structures,

Recommendations on the future of speech technologies : papers that
address the current state of affairs in speech technologies and make
recommendations to researchers for critical considerations that must be
made in designing future speech technologies,

Case studies : case studies of real world speech systems deployment,
social and ethical issues in use and deployment of speech systems, etc.

*** Author Guidelines ***

Submissions should follow the Interspeech 2022 submission format : “the
paper length should be up to four pages in two columns. An additional page
can be used for references only. Paper submissions must conform to the
format defined in the paper preparation guidelines as instructed in the
author’s kit on the conference webpage. Submissions may also be accompanied
by additional files such as multimedia files. Authors must declare that
their contributions are original and that they have not submitted their
papers elsewhere for publication.” You can submit original research work or
a summary of research activities done in the direction of Speech for Social
Good. You can present original completed work, a case study, a negative
result, an opinion piece, or an interesting application nugget.

The review process will be double-blinded. Submissions must not identify
authors or their affiliations, or they will be desk-rejected.

Accepted papers will be presented during the workshop by either oral
presentations or posters determined by the program committee.

Each submission should additionally discuss the ethical and societal
implications of the work. We encourage authors to also include a discussion
of what “positive impact” means to them or to the field of NLP.

*** Submission Link ***

We will be using the SoftConf conference management system. To make a new
submission, please use this link
https://www.softconf.com/m/s4sg2022/user/scmd.cgi?scmd=submitNew.

*** Important dates ***

Abstract Submissions Due: May 2, 2022

Paper Submission Deadline : May 9, 2022

Notification of Acceptance: June 13, 2022

Camera-ready Papers Due: June 20, 2022

Workshop: September 24-25, 2022

*** Organizing committee ***

Anurag Katakkar, NVIDIA Corporation

Alan W Black, Carnegie Mellon University

Sunayana Sitaram, Microsoft Research India

Sakriani Sakti, JAIST

Shrimai Prabhumoye, NVIDIA Corporation

Sai Krishna Rallabandi, Carnegie Mellon University

Vikram Ramanarayanan, Modality AI

Anirudh Koul, Pinterest

*** Important Links ***

Website: http://s4sg-workshop.github.io

Submission Portal:
https://www.softconf.com/m/s4sg2022/user/scmd.cgi?scmd=submitNew

Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/s4sg_workshop

***Speech for Social Good Workshop <https://s4sg-workshop.github.io>, Interspeech 2022*** Despite the fact that speech is the most natural form of human communication, the appeal of speech technologies has been inhibited by their limited availability and accessibility. Globally, speech technologies, including recognition and generation, are concentrated in regions of relative economic stability, which naturally excludes low resource languages from mainstream research. Even where available, these systems have biases in gender and accent, and are mostly unusable for individuals with speech impediments. Further, even though modelling and data curation are very important in academic circles, deployment and the challenges thereof in real world scenarios are often not spoken about. As speech technologies continue to be employed in an increasing number of application areas - despite the aforementioned shortcomings - we aim to highlight research that will make speech technologies more inclusive and useful for all, and believe that this workshop will provide a platform to address and highlight the social problems of incumbent speech systems. *** Topics *** Though we highlight a few topics of interest below, we invite submissions of any applications of speech technologies to social good: - Bias in Speech Technologies : Identifying and mitigating gender, racial, and other social biases in speech recognition or generation systems, - Impaired Speech : Developing better ASR, learning aids, and diagnostic tools for individuals with speech impediments or other medical conditions, - Support for seniors : synthesis and dialog systems that address the unique challenges brought on by age, - Improving speech intelligibility : better synthesis systems for hearing-impaired individuals, - Low Resource Languages : Developing data efficient systems for low resource languages, low resource data collection and curation, challenges in building such systems, challenges in collecting low resource data, case studies in low-resource languages, - Affective computing : ASR systems for emotion recognition, and synthesis/dialog systems for positive human-computer interaction, identifying signs of depression and other mental health conditions, - Challenges of Speech for Social Good : research and survey papers highlighting the challenges of designing such systems, privacy and ethical concerns, identifying and preventing potential misuse of speech systems, - Social good, justice, equity : surveys on demographic usage of speech technologies including identification of most typical user types, and which groups are currently most disadvantaged by these systems, how speech systems can be used to challenge the existing power structures, - Recommendations on the future of speech technologies : papers that address the current state of affairs in speech technologies and make recommendations to researchers for critical considerations that must be made in designing future speech technologies, - Case studies : case studies of real world speech systems deployment, social and ethical issues in use and deployment of speech systems, etc. *** Author Guidelines *** Submissions should follow the Interspeech 2022 submission format : “the paper length should be up to four pages in two columns. An additional page can be used for references only. Paper submissions must conform to the format defined in the paper preparation guidelines as instructed in the author’s kit on the conference webpage. Submissions may also be accompanied by additional files such as multimedia files. Authors must declare that their contributions are original and that they have not submitted their papers elsewhere for publication.” You can submit original research work or a summary of research activities done in the direction of Speech for Social Good. You can present original completed work, a case study, a negative result, an opinion piece, or an interesting application nugget. The review process will be double-blinded. Submissions must not identify authors or their affiliations, or they will be desk-rejected. Accepted papers will be presented during the workshop by either oral presentations or posters determined by the program committee. Each submission should additionally discuss the ethical and societal implications of the work. We encourage authors to also include a discussion of what “positive impact” means to them or to the field of NLP. *** Submission Link *** We will be using the SoftConf conference management system. To make a new submission, please use this link <https://www.softconf.com/m/s4sg2022/user/scmd.cgi?scmd=submitNew>. *** Important dates *** Abstract Submissions Due: May 2, 2022 Paper Submission Deadline : May 9, 2022 Notification of Acceptance: June 13, 2022 Camera-ready Papers Due: June 20, 2022 Workshop: September 24-25, 2022 *** Organizing committee *** Anurag Katakkar, NVIDIA Corporation Alan W Black, Carnegie Mellon University Sunayana Sitaram, Microsoft Research India Sakriani Sakti, JAIST Shrimai Prabhumoye, NVIDIA Corporation Sai Krishna Rallabandi, Carnegie Mellon University Vikram Ramanarayanan, Modality AI Anirudh Koul, Pinterest *** Important Links *** Website: http://s4sg-workshop.github.io Submission Portal: https://www.softconf.com/m/s4sg2022/user/scmd.cgi?scmd=submitNew Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/s4sg_workshop