Smartphone App Gives Voice to Those Who Cannot Speak

Students at University of Toronto in Canada have designed a smartphone application that merges a voice synthesizer with a GPS to give people who cannot speak the words they need. The app, called MyVoice, is available for the iPhone, with an Android version in development.

MyVoice is an assistive and augmentative communication device that adds location-based vocabularies. The app suggests words and phrases determined by a user’s location. At popular Canadian coffee shop Tim Horton’s, for example, MyVoice instantly generates menu items like “Tim Bits” and “Double Double” for use in conversation.

The app was developed in the university’s Technologies for Aging Gracefully Lab. Lead designer and computer science student Alex Levy told CTV News that he approached the problem as one where the patient needs to quickly find the right words to fit the situation. Levy partnered with computer engineering student Aakash Sahney to develop the system. They found funding for the project through Google as well as the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

The smartphone app is supplemented by an online service that lets users create customized downloadable vocabularies, either from prepared collections or their own words or phrases. Users can also indicate favorite or frequent locations for their unique vocabularies. The app can output synthesized male or female voices, North American and British accents, emphasis and questioning inflections, and can add human touches, such as laughs, whistles, and coughs.

Levy and Sahney tell CTV they are still testing the app with different kinds of potential users, such as seniors living with the effects of a stroke and teens with autism and learning difficulties. They started a company, MyVoice Inc., to offer the app and a subscription service for customers.

The app is available free for six months from the iTunes Store. The company charges a fee of $30.00 a month after the trial period.

MyVoice has received requests from institutions, collaborators, and school boards to test the technology. The device is currently in use at a school in Toronto.

Read more: iPhone App to Test Brain Training in Older Adults

Photo: William Hook/Flickr

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