ELTE Innofair 2026 is Eötvös Loránd University’s flagship event showcasing its innovation and industry relations. At the event, we aim to present and demonstrate – through CONCRETE, PRACTICAL PROJECTS – the gaps between language technology research, its industrial applications, and everyday use, placing special emphasis on the perspectives of people with speech impairments and disabilities.

In the workshop we present some of the practical, industrial applications of speech technology, while also demonstrating the academic and research background of the field. The professionals giving the talks have many decades of experience and an academic background in the fields of data science, artificial intelligence research and application, and language technology.

The project aims to support people with speech impairments through language technology and automatic speech recognition. The workshop reviews the related language technology developments and challenges, on 30 October 2026, at the ELTE Lágymányos Campus, where I serve as moderator and professional lead.

What is AAC?

AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) is an umbrella term for the methods and tools that enable expression for people who communicate without speech or with limited speech – for example, people with certain motor or intellectual disabilities, autism spectrum disorder, aphasia, or dysarthria. This includes picture-based communication boards as well as eye-gaze- or touch-controlled digital text-to-speech applications. Advances in language technology and automatic speech recognition have significantly expanded the possibilities of AAC tools in recent years, especially for accessible Hungarian-language solutions – such as the Talkie application presented at the workshop.

Workshop programme

• Industry experience in language technology – Tibor Fegyó and co-authors (Department of Telecommunications and Artificial Intelligence, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics, Budapest University of Technology and Economics; SpeechText Ltd.) present industry applications of automatic speech recognition.
• The robot interviewer – research talk – Zita Kovács-Ördög (data scientist, Clementine / Minerva Institute) presents her experience developing a robot interviewer and the practical applications of AI-based data collection; her talk is one of the central pillars of the programme.
• Talkie – live demo – Zoltán Répási (hahodori) demonstrates Talkie, a browser-based Hungarian-language AAC application that helps people who communicate without speech.
• Research on dysarthric speech recognition – an overview of the latest research results on automatic recognition of impaired, hard-to-understand speech.

The workshop, moderated by Roland Keszi (ELTE), is held by Tibor Fegyó and co-authors, Zoltán Répási, and Zita Kovács-Ördög (data scientist, Clementine / Minerva Institute) on a voluntary basis, without requesting financial support. The project’s participants take part as committed volunteers, without requesting financial support, with the aim of improving the life situations of people with disabilities. Our goal is to connect research, industry, and civil innovation, and to start new collaborations in this important field.