SpeakUnique 3 months on
September 2020: Our spin-out company has had enquiries from across the world since launch.
We can’t believe how time flies, but it’s now 3 months since we launched our first ever spin-out company SpeakUnique. The company has created an international reputation since then and had enquiries from across the world including UK, the US, Singapore and Australia.
The result of a Euan MacDonald Centre collaborative research project, SpeakUnique allows people to create a personalised synthetic voice if they’ve lost, or are at risk of losing, their voice due to a medical condition. SpeakUnique can build users a synthetic voice using less than an hour’s worth of speech, all recorded from the comfort of their own home.
The list of accents that have been produced for people who have signed up for the service keeps growing each week and includes Aberdonian, Bedfordshire, Californian, Danish, Welsh and Zimbabwean
People with MND have also benefitted from funding for the cost of their voices with support from MND Scotland in Scotland and the MND Association for the rest of the UK.
‘We’re very pleased with the first few months of being up and running and are so glad that people worldwide are able to benefit from our voice technology. When people lose their voice, they can feel they have lost not just the ability to speak, but also a part of their identity. Individuals and their families get so much back from having a voice that is recognisably their own.’
There are four voice services offered by the SpeakUnique
- Voice Build: a replica of your own voice
- Voice Design: a unique bespoke voice with your choice of regional accent, age or gender
- Voice Repair: a repaired synthetic voice that sounds like your healthy voice before speech symptoms developed
- Voice Save: the opportunity to prospectively bank your voice just in case something were to happen
During the research project, which was based at the Anne Rowling Clinic, over 1600 people from all over Scotland and the UK donated their voices to allow individuals to communicate with a voice that is identifiably their own. We’re so grateful to everyone who supported the project and has helped us to offer voices to people who need them worldwide!
Find out more at www.speakunique.co.uk
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