Back in 2009, Roger Ebert put on his blog his frustration at not being able to talk to get his message across (I found the blog entry at the time while experiencing my own lack of voice): Finding My Own Voice http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/08/finding_my_own_voice.html. In the post, he described finding a company, CereProc (http://www.cereproc.com/), that seemed to offer a solution to his problem.
My mom told me that Roger Ebert went on Oprah today and talked, using this technology. How cool is that?! They were able to recreate his voice to speak the words he typed, thanks to the hours of recordings he had made as a film reviewer over the years. More information on the Oprah episode with a video link are here at the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/02/AR2010030202326.html.
Not many of us would have such a voice reference library if we lost our voices suddenly due to accident or disease. Maybe, just maybe, if one knew that losing their ability to speak is a distinct possibility, one could contact CereProc and 'store' a recording to be used later if speech disappeared. I don't know if CereProc has such a 'voice bank', but after last summer, I will probably be contacting them to see if I could be their guinea pig. If I ever lose my voice again, I want to be able to tell someone someday to kiss my left hind leg with all the inflection and emotion I had when I could speak...
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1 comment:
I loved that image, Teri, of you telling someone to kiss your hind leg. Too funny!
You know, there really isn't much out there about how to cope with losing your voice. You hear about losing your hearing or your sight or your mobility, but your voice? So, I'm gldd that they're figuring out how to "speak" with this technology.
And, Happy Birthday tomorrow! May you have many more, happy, happy years ahead of you!
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