07/25/2024
Welcome Annoucement
Ataxia Foundation Ireland is delighted to announce that they will fund Speak Unique for its members. This will be of huge benefit to many members. The equipment necessary to bank your voice with Speak Unique will be available from AFI. For more information on this contact msweeney@afi.ie
A common question we are often asked is about Voice Banking.
Voice Build is a synthetic replica of your own voice that can be used in your communication device. This is ideal for people whose ataxia is likely to impact their speech but who have not yet had any significant symptoms.
This is for people who have already noticed considerable changes in their speech. For example, if you struggle to articulate some words or sound more breathy than normal, Voice Repair can repair this damage in your synthetic voice.
This is for people who have no intelligible speech and enables you to design your synthetic voice based on your chosen characteristics such as regional accent, age, and gender.
Speak unique
https://www.speakunique.co.uk/about-us/
Speech can deteriorate and become very unclear for people with degenerative conditions meaning that they will need a speech-generating device. When people lose their voice, they often lose part of their identity. Speak Unique makes it easier for people to bank their voice. The client can choose from a variety of stories on the website and read for approx. 1-2 hours (this doesn’t have to be completed all in one sitting). These stories include all the speech sounds so they will be able to generate any sentence that the client wants to say once they start using a speech device. The client will be able to hear samples of their voice and if the client is happy with their synthetic voice, it is only then Speak unique request payment. For someone who has their voice banked, it will mean that when they make a sentence using the speech app their voice will sound like them and will be easily recognisable to family and friends. If someone didn’t have the opportunity to bank their voice they will have to use a generic voice that doesn’t sound like them.
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