How this escaped my radar, I'll never know, but it's brilliant.
FIRST: take a moment to think of Stephen Hawking's voice
THEN: read on...
Just after I first arrived in Korea, I was listening to NPR TED Radio Hour when I heard Rupal Patel being interviewed about her big new idea for synthetic voices. I was so inspired by the story, and I remember tearing up when I heard some of the voices that were created for people with speech disorders. The new technology blends together the speech sounds of a person who is unable to speak with sounds from a voice donor and creates a brand new, unique computerized voice for the individual... [read more on the Life in Limbo blog].
Many of those with severe speech disorders use a computerized device to communicate. Yet they choose between only a few voice options. That's why Stephen Hawking has an American accent, and why many people end up with the same voice, often to incongruous effect. Speech scientist Rupal Patel wanted to do something about this... [watch the TED Talk].
UVic linguistics associate professor Sonya Bird was listening to the CBC Radio “Spark” program in early 2014 when she first heard the voice of Rupal Patel, a Canadian researcher based in Boston who launched the VocaliD Human Voicebank in May 2014. The interview ignited Bird’s immediate interest in contributing to Patel’s mission to connect those living with a severe speech disorder (or limited speech) to their own unique vocal identities. Now, as a result of an eight-month volunteer effort by the Voice Drive Victoria group in collaboration with local speech language pathologist Gail Poole, more than 100 people in our region have donated their voices to this global effort ... [read more about UVIC's contribution].
VocalID links
About VocalID
About the VoiceBank
Related resources
Synthetic voices, as unique as fingerprints - TED Tallk by Rupal Patel
Everything you need to know about donating your voice: Why you should help The Human Voicebank Initiative - TED Blog
Lending voice to an international initiative - UVIC
Speech Donors - CBC Spark Podcast
Vocal ID: Donate Your Voice - Life in Limbo blog
No comments:
Post a Comment