Smartphone games will check children’s speech development

Bill McKiernan, founder of the Business Plan Competition run by The Ireland Funds in partnership with the National Digital Research Centre, with winners Celine de Looze and Shona D’Arcy of Kids Speech Labs Pic: Aengus McMahon

Dublin start-up Kids Speech Labs (KSL) is using artificial intelligence (AI) to develop smartphone games that will allow parents to track their children’s speech development.

An electronics engineer with a PhD in speech recognition, Shona D’Arcy established KSL last July with co-founder Dr Celine de Looze.

“My PhD focused on children’s speech. Speech recognition for children has its own specific set of problems,” said D’Arcy. “That was about 18 years ago. After that, ...