Tilde × Microsoft — A Wearable-Mic Speech-to-Text Pilot for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students in Latvia

The World Health Organization estimates around 430 million people worldwide live with disabling hearing loss, including students who need real-time classroom accommodations to access lessons on equal terms — a gap Latvian schools had limited tools to close.
Latvian language-technology company Tilde, working with Microsoft and supported by NGOs and schools, built an automatic speech-recognition system paired with a cordless wearable microphone. As a teacher speaks, the system transcribes their speech live and displays it as captions on interactive whiteboards, classroom monitors, PCs or mobile devices.
The solution was tested as a proof-of-concept with mathematics, literature and informatics teachers and their students in two Latvian schools, as reported by the American Chamber of Commerce in Latvia and by language-industry trade outlet Slator in October 2023. Tilde's business-development director noted the captions also help students who are visual learners or who struggle to focus on spoken language alone, and said several other schools had expressed interest in testing the system.
This is an early-stage, unevaluated pilot: no accuracy figures, number of students reached, or learning-outcome data have been published, and no funding or national rollout plan has been announced. It is included here precisely because it is an honest, verifiable example of where an accessibility deployment currently stands — real but still small and unproven, rather than dressed up as more than it is.

Read the full analysis: https://www.amcham.lv/en/communications/news/microsoft-and-tilde-develop-solution-to-support-inclusive-education