Project Understood is a data-driven campaign that uses voice data to give people with Down syndrome access to voice technology and its life changing-independence. The creative use of data is integral to Project Understand; our strategy was grounded in the insight that Google’s AI lacks sufficient voice data to be able to understand the Down syndrome community’s unique speech patterns. To fill this gap, we recruited people with Down syndrome to donate the missing voice data samples, empowering the community to teach Google how to understand them, and finally access a tool that could support their goal to live independently.

With 8 billion voice assistants in use globally by 2023, the future will be voice-first, but that future doesn’t include people with Down syndrome. Voice technology’s algorithm often doesn’t understand the community’s unique speech patterns, leaving them behind in the voice revolution. As a marginalized community, their needs weren’t considered.

The Canadian Down Syndrome Society (CDSS) had two problems to solve on a minuscule budget:

1- Make voice technology accessible to people with Down syndrome

2- Shift perceptions of a stigmatized community by showing how access to voice technology can lead to life-changing independence.

Young adults in the Down syndrome community are entirely capable of living independently. But to achieve self-sufficiency, they require more reminders, structure, and routine– unique needs they normally rely on caregivers for but could be answered by voice technology’s tools instead. This meant that access to voice assistants could offer life-changing independence for an entire community.

To increase access to Google’s voice technology, we turned the Down syndrome community into Google’s teachers. We worked with Google- a technology that usually teaches us– and empowered people with Down syndrome to use their voice, and voice data, to be the ones teaching Google.

Introducing Project Understood, a campaign that turns people with Down syndrome into Google’s teachers, by recruiting them to donate their voice data to train Google’s speech recognition model to understand them. Making voice technology more inclusive, by including people with Down syndrome in creating the data-driven solution.

Project Understood, like all CDSS campaigns, humanizes a misunderstood community. But this year’s campaign went further and empowered the community, turning their limitation - atypical speech - into a valuable data asset they could use to build their own independent future. Evolving from awareness and advocacy to giving the community agency, inclusion, and utility - all at once.

Voice technology requires millions of data points (human voices) to perform optimally. Unfortunately, for those with Down syndrome, the small size of their community means these AI systems are lacking the data they need to reliably understand them. So the CDSS played an essential role in directly recruiting the niche Down syndrome community and collecting a large enough data sample that could recognize the unique patterns in their speech and retrain Google’s voice algorithm. Data collection was critical, because it was the missing piece to unlocking voice technology for people with Down syndrome – giving them access to life-changing independence

Google’s voice assistant has the most market share in Canada, yet currently misunderstands about one in every three words of a person with Down syndrome. This made Google the ideal partner for CDSS as they would have the greatest impact on the Down syndrome community in Canada.

Project Understood was a rallying cry for the Down syndrome community to donate their voice to Google and improve voice technology for everyone. The campaign launched during Canadian Down Syndrome Week, with social videos acting as a recruitment tool, mobilizing the community to donate their voices and empowering the community to be part of the solution.

With only $1000 in media, we targeted this niche Down syndrome community organically, knowing the more they engaged, the more we’d reach them. Through email and organic social, we engineered direct outreach to Down syndrome groups across North America to collect voice data, who in turn engaged another 735 international Down syndrome groups to participate. Participants were driven to Projectunderstood.ca where they received a login to enter Chit Chat– a platform designed to capture 1000s of recordings to train Google’s voice assistant technology.

Earned media further amplified our message, changing perceptions of the community.

Project Understood achieved global reach. ROI is incalculable, but on a cost per impression basis, 775,000 impressions per $ spent isn’t bad. Other campaign results:

Recruiting the community:

-826,107 organic reach on Facebook (a 678% increase from the CDSS’s best performing campaign) and 82,995 engagements - with just $1,000 in media

-30+ countries and 735 Down syndrome organizations participated

-Over one million voices were donated to Google’s speech recognition database

Changing public perceptions:

-775 million earned media impressions globally.

Project Understood is making voice technology inclusive for the Down syndrome community. Google and CDSS presented their research at the UN on March 20th, 2020, calling on all technology companies to make voice technology accessible. In the Spring of 2021, Google launched a new beta voice assistant, based on the data we helped capture, showing Project Understood’s long-term impact on a vulnerable community.