I’ve written about Professor Rupal Patel’s work several times before, but it never ever gets old. So much of our personality, she’s told me before, is tied up in our voice. That ends up meaning a lot to someone who can’t use their voice to communicate. Patel is working on a technology that not only gives voice to the voiceless, like the synthetic voice technologies currently available, but does so while also retaining the personal identity of the individual using it. This great video about her work aired on Huffington Post the other day. Enjoy!

Also, here’s another great video about what it really means for so many people with speech disorders to be using the same synthetic voice:

Voice by Choice from Christopher Newell on Vimeo.