VoisIT
The story
About the projects and the people VoisIT builds on.
The first part is the English text from the earlier VoisIT website (2023). The current Faroese version also thanks Annika Simonsen and Dánial á Dul Jacobsen. Søgan (føroyskt).
The story behind VoisIT
The inception of VoisIT was influenced by two separate yet significant projects that aimed to revolutionize Faroese language communication. The first project, initiated in 2019 by a team of linguists, embarked on the ambitious Ravnur project to gather a diverse range of audio recordings from Faroese speakers, creating a rich repository for linguistic analysis and research.
In a parallel development, Carlos Mena undertook a separate project in November 2022 at the University of Reykjavik, to train an ASR model, marking the first quality attempt at speech-to-text functionality for the Faroese language, with a Word-Error-Rate of around 6%. Recognizing the immense potential of these developments, iSolveIT ApS took the initiative to create the VoisIT app, successfully launching it in the summer of 2023 as a beacon of inclusive communication.
Meet the minds behind VoisIT
At iSolveIT ApS, we are dedicated to dismantling communication barriers and fostering a world where inclusivity is the norm. Our journey began with a vision to create a revolutionary tool that would serve the deaf community. As the project got rolled out, we found out that VoisIT’s capabilities vastly exceeded our expectations, and was able to assist a broader spectrum of users, including those who are dyslexic or blind. Leveraging the foundational work of the Ravnur project and the separate efforts of Carlos Mena, we have transformed VoisIT into a pioneering platform in Faroese language communication technology, helping those with communication barriers.
Thank you
In the journey of bringing VoisIT to life, we were fortunate to stand on the shoulders of giants. We extend our deepest gratitude to:
Karin Kass, the visionary founder of the Ravnur project, who breathed life into this initiative, giving the raven (Ravnur) its wings. It was her foresight and dedication that laid the foundation upon which VoisIT could soar. In many ways, she gave this raven its life, while we at iSolveIT ApS merely guided it to take flight.
Peter Juel Henrichsen, whose technical expertise significantly contributed to the project, helping to shape it into the transformative tool it is today.
Carlos Daniel Hernandez Mena, who undertook the monumental task of training the ASR model at the University of Reykjavík in November 2022, a pivotal step that brought us closer to realizing the dream of barrier-free communication in the Faroese language.
We also extend our heartfelt thanks to our users and supporters, whose continuous encouragement and feedback fuel our passion to innovate and enhance VoisIT further. Together, we are forging a future where communication is inclusive and accessible to all.
Supporters
VoisIT has received support from:
Since 2023
Over the last three to four years, most of the work has not been about the original project. Instead, iSolveIT has produced its own Faroese material to train speech recognition and speech synthesis models.
In early 2025, iSolveIT trained its own text-to-speech model, which reads Faroese text aloud. In the summer of 2026, iSolveIT also trained a new speech recognition model from scratch.