Intelligibility can be successfully assessed in-person by computer, but it is also necessary to assess intelligibility online, as phone-/videocalls are daily used. The aim is to investigate whether it is feasible to teleassess speech intelligibility and to what extent remote recordings via Zoom are comparable to in-person recordings.

15 healthy speakers (25-83 y.o.) without neurological/psychiatric disorders and 1 individual (45 y.o.) with post-acute mild apraxia of speech took part in this study. Speech intelligibility was evaluated by a recent computer-based assessment tool. Offline intelligibility scoring was performed by three SLTs, in order to control for interrater agreement. All participants underwent teleassessment with three simultaneous sources of recordings: 1) “local high-quality (HQ)”: speech recorded in-person with professional microphone and external USB soundcard; 2) “local standard-quality (SQ)”: speech recorded in-person with WAVE files automatically transferred to an online server; 3) “remote”: speech recorded by the remotely located experimenter via an education account of Zoom.

For healthy speakers, maximal intelligibility scores were given to 58% of participants in remote recordings, 76% in local SQ recordings and 82% in local HQ recordings. There was a significant main effect of the recording source. Similarly, lower mean intelligibility scores were given to the AoS participant in remote recordings than in local SQ and local HQ recordings. Overall interrater agreement on intelligibility scoring was substantial.

Even if teleassessment of speech intelligibility seems feasible, intelligibility scores significantly decreased in remote recordings as compared to local recordings. Intelligibility scoring seems more influenced by online speech compression than by subjective perception, considering the substantial interrater agreement.