Though the public broadcaster doesn’t plan to release a standalone device, BBC announced a forthcoming competitor to Amazon’s Alexa: Beeb. The assistant will be able to recognize regional accents (British ones first) with greater accuracy. The company plans to ask employees from offices across the UK to engage with the software this week in order to gauge its ability to understand identical languages delivered with …
Open-Source Software Making Museums More Accessible Oftentimes, the process of visiting a museum begins at an institution’s website, and not all of them are accessible to people with disabilities. In fact, several notable NYC institutions’ websites are not readable by visitors with loss of vision. Those museums should take a tip from Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art whose open-source software—a tool that can be added …
Using information from the World Atlas of Language Structures, researchers surveyed the features of 239 languages to determine which are “weirdest”—meaning in sound, the number of features and sentence construction. Out of 239, English ranked 33rd. Citing its abnormally high number of phenomes (most languages have around 25, but English has 44) and the odd way English-speakers assemble questions, the study unbiasedly shows how English …
