See how iOS 17's Personal Voice feature helps a disability advocate in a touching video
Apple just shared the first-hand experience of a disability advocate who managed to preserve his voice with its Personal Voice feature.
Tristram Ingham, who is a physician, academic researcher and disability community leader, is diagnosed withfacioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD). FSHDbrings about progressive muscle degeneration starting in the face, shoulders, and arms. Ultimately, patients will lose theability to speak or feed themselves.
For Ingham, the symptoms of FSHD started to developin2013 when he had to startusing a wheelchair. In recent years, he also noticed changes in voicewhich could jeopardisehis career as words are his power.
Fortunately, Ingham was able to preserve his voice with Apple's Personal Voice on the iPhone. Sharing his experience, he praised the setting up process as "really straightforward."
He is also impressed with Personal Voice at replicating his voice in his style of speaking.
With Apple's Personal Voice feature, Ingham says he can continue reading bedtime stories to his three grandchildren. He said:
“I’m not prepared to just sit at home. I work, I volunteer in the community, and I expect to contribute meaningfully. Technology helps me to do that.”
How does Personal Voice achieve that? Ituses machine learning on the iPhone to help users at risk of speech loss create a synthesized voice that sounds like them, through a series of text prompts to capture 15 minutes of audio. Since the synthesized voice is created entirely on-device, user privacy is maintained.
Personal Voice can also work hand-in-hand with another speech accessibility feature, Live Speech, to offer users the option to type what they want to say and have the phrase spoken aloud.
Apple launched the Personal Voice feature with iOS 17, iPadOS 17 and macOS Sonoma.And you can create your own voice by goingtoSettings > Accessibility > Personal Voice.It is currently available in English. Check out Apple's "The Lost Voice" video below which featured Ingham's Personal Voice.
Source: Apple
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