Auris Tech, founded by Competition Jury member Kim Antoniou, was ranked first in
BusinessCloud’s EdTech 50 ranking of innovative UK education technology companies.
The result was announced on 25 March 2022 following the creation of a 99-company
shortlist. According to Auris Tech, the final ranking combined the assessment of an
independent judging panel with the results of a public vote involving approximately 1,000
participants.
Auris Tech is the company behind Fonetti, a reading platform developed around automatic
speech recognition technology.
The company’s work addresses a particular technological challenge: recognising the way
children read aloud.
Reading speech differs from ordinary conversational speech. Children may pause, repeat
words, return to an earlier part of a sentence or skip unfamiliar words. Speech-recognition
technology designed for general conversation may therefore have difficulty accurately
following a child’s reading.
Auris Tech developed its technology around these specific characteristics, allowing its
platform to follow spoken reading and support literacy development.
Recognition in the EdTech 50 highlighted the wider potential of specialised technology
developed for a clearly defined educational problem.
It also illustrates an important characteristic of innovation: successful technology does not
necessarily depend on creating the broadest possible application. In many cases, significant
innovation comes from understanding a specific user group and designing technology around
its particular requirements.
For education technology, this means combining technical development with an
understanding of how teachers and students actually use the product.
The 2022 recognition represented another stage in the development of Auris Tech and its
work in applying speech-recognition technology to children’s literacy.
Kim Antoniou is Founder and CEO of Auris Tech and serves on the Competition Jury of the
Association of Certified Professionals in Innovation & Invention.