Speech is a hugely efficient means of communication: a reduced capacity in listening or speaking creates a significant barrier to social inclusion at all points through the lifespan, in education, work and at home. Hearing aids and speech synthesis can help address this reduced capacity but their use imposes greater listener effort.

The fundamental objective of the ENRICH network is to modify or augment speech with additional information to make it easier to process. The network will train 14 PhD students and give them not just the necessary cross-disciplinary knowledge and research skills, but also experience of entrepreneurship and technology transfer so they can translate research findings into products and services that will help everybody communicate successfully.