Pilot Project with the Building Industry in South Africa

The overall goal with the MELFA pilot project (2007-2009) is to enable illiterate and semi-literate Xhosa speaking building workers to receive complementary literacy, language and skills training via a mobile device and thereby assisting them in their personal growth and in performing their jobs better.

Innovative interactive technologies, including Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Text-To-Speech (TTS), speech translation, 3-D graphical illustration and M-learning are applied in the developing of a running prototype. The results from user tests and conclusions will eventually be used to indicate the prominence for further development and marketing.

In perspective

The current pilot project has identified a distinct target group and product. However, the development potential for the technology is considered substantial. With the basic platform in place, many more applications can be developed and marketed: More languages; more sectors and target groups; more countries.

The Project Team

We are a team of researchers, entrepreneurs, designers, programmers and educators with wide-ranging experience in human language technology, speech-language therapy, curriculum design, and in designing interactive systems.

The Consortium behind the project consists of five main partners, South African and Danish.
CatchWord Language and Speech Technologies (Pty) Ltd
Stellenbosch University, Centre for Language and Speech Technology
Motto-Captura ApS
Sensus ApS
University of Copenhagen, Faculty of Humanities

Additionally, the constortium works closely together with the building industry in both countries:
The Danish Building Research Institute,
The Master Builders and Allied Trades' Association, Western Cape and TJEKA Training

Background

Melfa is spun off from another project MELFO Mobile E Learning For Dyslexic.
The MELFO-project (2005-2007) aimed at providing a facility for mobile e-learning to Danish workers within the building industry with reading difficulties including dyslexics so that they could train at home, in the canteen, etc. The project was also to provide on-the-spot guidance on site and in other working situations with respect to understanding instructions for machines and procedures, bus timetables, museum visits etc. The tool was tested amongst workers from Davidsen Partnere, NCC and MTHøjgaard with positive feedback for further development.