Help AI catch Flemish accents: KU Leuven and Scivil launch Maarallee
KU Leuven and the Flemish Knowledge Centre for Citizen Science (Scivil) have launched Maarallee, a citizen science platform that collects speech from across Flanders to improve automatic speech recognition (ASR). The goal is simple: reduce errors caused by models trained mostly on data from the Netherlands.
If your GPS struggles with "Turnhout" in a Kempen accent, this is the fix. Record short sentences, help validate transcriptions, and move ASR closer to real Flemish speech coverage.
Why a Flemish dataset matters
Most commercial ASR models lean on Dutch data from the Netherlands. That skews pronunciation, word usage, and prosody away from Flemish speech. The result: higher error rates, frustrating user experiences, and avoidable accessibility gaps.
Broad, diverse speech data changes that. As the project partners note, without it, AI stays useful for a few and unreliable for many.
How Maarallee works
- Contributors read short sentences on maarallee.be.
- The platform auto-transcribes each clip; volunteers correct the text.
- KU Leuven uses the cleaned data to build and evaluate a Flemish-focused ASR model.
Every accent, region, and age group adds signal. Even small batches of clips help close dialect gaps that standard datasets miss.
Where this matters now
- Education and media: automatic subtitling that reflects Flemish speech.
- Healthcare: hands-free note-taking and dictation that hear patients and clinicians correctly.
- Industry and services: voice interfaces that work on the shop floor and in vehicles.
- Accessibility: voice-controlled tools that respond reliably for people with disabilities.
For researchers and R&D teams
- Expect gains in word error rate on Flemish benchmarks by expanding phonetic and dialect coverage.
- Use the data to stress-test ASR across regions (e.g., Kempen, West-Flemish, Antwerp) and age cohorts.
- Pair contributions with clear evaluation sets to quantify accent-specific improvements.
Participation is open to everyone. Add your voice, review a few transcripts, and help build ASR that works for all Flemish speakers.
Get involved: Record at maarallee.be. Learn more about the academic partner at KU Leuven.
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