Everyone Deserves a Voice

SPRING VOICE DRIVE! VocaliD is excited to partner with Rettgirl.org to host a VoiceDrive [April 15 - June 15, 2017, follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more details]. 

The voice-to-voice interactions we share everyday are a bond as powerful as touch. Voice is intrinsically hardwired to our sense of "connectedness" and community. Our voice instantly conveys the unique and wonderful qualities about our identity-- our age, our gender, our ethnicity, and for some of us, even what region we are from. It’s how people know us-- it’s how they remember us. Think about the last time you called someone you love on the phone, you probably simply said, ‘hello’ and they knew it was you.

Everyone should have their own voice. Yet there are tens of millions worldwide who are unable to speak— including those living with Rett syndrome, cerebral palsy, autism, Parkinson’s Disease, ALS, head/neck cancer and many other conditions. These individuals rely on alternative, augmentative means of communications such as computerized talking devices. Although today’s talking devices provide a means to communicate, they cannot fully enable identity because they all sound the same. We wouldn’t dream of fitting a little girl with the prosthetic limb of a grown man, why then the same prosthetic voice? 

At VocaliD, we believe that everyone has a unique voice that deserves to be heard.

To deliver on this, we have crowdsourced the voice collection process. Instead of a voice actor spending weeks recording, anyone can record on our online web platform. All they need is a computer running Google chrome, a headset microphone and a quiet room. Today, over 20,000 volunteer speakers ranging in age from 6-91 from 110 countries have contributed more than 9 million sentences to our Human Voicebank initiative. That means we can create a variety of diverse voices. But we can do more. 

We can now reverse engineer a voice by blending vocal samples of those who are unable to speak with several hours of recordings from a matched speech donor. That’s because, through years of research, we’ve discovered that even a single vowel contains enough vocal DNA to seed the voice personalization process. This discovery, along with our growing Voicebank and voice blending algorithms, allow us  to create unique digital voices for a fraction of the price and with all the warmth and nuances of the natural human voice. 

Our recipients include kids like Leo. While Leo can’t articulate words, he is a fierce and proficient user of his talker which is his primary means of communication. For Leo’s parents one of the biggest hurdles was getting him to feel comfortable using the talking device in public and not be embarrassed about the way it sounded. Unfortunately, this is an experience that many parents who have kids with speech limitations can relate to. Children are less motivated to speak when they don’t feel their device represents who they are and when they know several other children and even adults who use the same voice. Thanks to thousands of voice donors from all over the world, VocaliD was able to customize a voice just for Leo. You can see Leo’s full story which was recently featured on NBC Nightly News.

 At VocaliD, we take pride in crafting a voice that fits our recipient-- in age, gender, tone and even accent. To do this we engage with families and communities to share their voice on the Human Voicebank. One of the most powerful things has been to see children and youth engaged in contributing their voice and even organizing voice drives within their community, for a bar/bat mitzvah or girlboy scouts project or as a service learning project. We have found that siblings whether younger or older are very excited to participate in a project that supports the nonverbal community. This is life changing stuff!

Even as recent as 20 years ago, individuals who would have been shut out by limitations in their communication are now living vibrant and connected lives. Our early adopters are talking more – as much as 300% more; at school, with friends and with strangers.  And it’s not just the recipients that benefit. A father of a 9 year old who received our BeSpoke voice said “It’s as if I’ve heard my daughter for the first time.”



There is still much work to be done. Creating custom voices requires high quality recordings and crowdsourcing doesn’t always yield the best quality recordings. So, let's do something to change that!

SPRING VOICE DRIVE! VocaliD is excited to partner with Rettgirl.org to host a VoiceDrive [April 15 - June 15, 2017, follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more details]. 

Please join us, as we give VOICE a whole new meaning. Because individuality matters, and it always will.

To contribute your voice, visit www.vocaliD.co/voicebank*
To learn more about our custom BeSpoke voices visit www.vocalid.co/products

*Please note that by contributing your voice, you are donating your voice recordings for use by those in need, you are not creating a voice for a specific person.

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About VocaliD
VocaliD is redefining how we interact with one another and our intelligent devices. We create custom digital voices as unique as fingerprints by leveraging our growing Human Voicebank of 20,000+ speech donors from around the world and proprietary voice blending algorithms. Our personalized voices empower millions who use assistive communication devices to be heard as themselves!