NORDUnet is tendering for a Speech2Text Solution
The Nordic R&E community is committed to produce and publish teaching and other material with subtitles, and generically ensure compliance with the EU Web Accessibility Directive and thereby WCAG version 2.1 AA, as well as the European Accessibility Act (EAA), when it enters into force, and any related national legislation within the Nordic countries.
On behalf of the Nordic NRENs DeiC, Sunet, CSC/Funet, Uninett & RHnet, NORDUnet invites suppliers of Speech-to-text solutions to bid for a single framework contract for a speech to text transcription and subtitling cloud service for the Nordic R&E community.
The scope for the tender is to secure a speech2text service to fulfill a number of highlevel requirements that include subtitling of video files and full integration with the NORDUnet on-premise operated media services, viz., MediaSite, Kaltura, and Panopto. Likewise, transcription of audio and video files, the use of a web-portal for upload and retrieval and use with a generic stable API for integration with University legacy systems for both upload and retrieval of audio and video files will form part of the wishes, and human speech capturing incl. transcription options will also form a natural part of the list of requirements
To safeguard the procurement of the best possible solution that will cover the needs of both NORDUnet, the Nordic NRENs and all connected institutions, a project group of representatives from all the above stakeholders have worked closely together on identifying the most important requirements for a solution
The overall aim of the joint procurement has been to secure one single speech2text transcription and subtitling cloudservice for the Nordic R&E community.This means that we will aim for a singleframework contract with one vendor. This will maximise the volume and simplify the integration with the SAML based Single Sign-on widely used and the media services. To mitigate a potential risk that the full solution might not be the best fit for all languages, it has been decided to be an opt in process where each NREN can decide if they want to do a call-off.
The speech2text solution will be included in the Nordic R&E community’s digitalization work, and as such the increased automation of the daily production of teaching material.
Further information and the tender material can be found at the procurement portal https://tender.konnect.dk/invite/918 published under OJEU notice number: 2021/S 065-166277.
