Our identity is expressed in many ways, from the clothes we wear and to the way we do our hair to the traits we’re born with, like our voice. Voice communicates our thoughts and emotions. But what if you lose your ability to speak?
A company in Massachusetts now creates custom voices that it says are designed to match the identity of recipients. One man from Windham is among the first to receive such a voice and recover something he thought was lost forever.
When you meet John Gregoire, there are a few other introductions to be made. There’s his wife, Linda. And then, there’s John’s voice.
“This is Ryan. The third person in our marriage,” John says, identifying the synthesized voice that he has relied on for years.
In 2007, John was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. It’s a degenerative disease that causes muscle weakness. He can’t walk or feed himself, but it was his ability to speak that was the first thing to go.
“The hardest thing, besides the diagnosis itself, was losing his voice,” Linda says.
“Harder than not walking,” John says.
“I lost a recording of his voice,” Linda says. “It was on his Blackberry, and we didn’t realize switching to the iPad and disconnecting his phone, we’d lose his greeting. And I used to call the greeting after he lost his voice just to listen to it. Gone.”
After John lost his ability to speak, he had to select a synthetic voice. He had several options. Probably the most well-known is the one used by physicist Stephen Hawking, who also has ALS, called Perfect Paul.
John wanted something more unique. He considered a voice called Will, but he ultimately chose Ryan because he says it was a more normal voice.
Still, says Linda, it’s a voice that a lot of other people share.
“It’s hard because we went to a gala, an ALS research gala to raise funds, and there were a lot of people with ALS in the room using their speech devices, and you’d see them typing,” she says. “And all the same voices are coming out. All the same men voices, all the same women voices. So you have to watch who is typing and who is speaking, because they all sound the same.”
These synthesized voices also can’t express the nuances of emotions and feelings, which makes the loss of John’s voice even harder.
“Having an identity that’s unique to me is something ALS stole from me. None of those things I can get back,” he says.
For seven years, that’s what John thought: His voice was gone forever. Until he heard about something called VocaliD.
“VocaliD is a company that crowdsources the collection of voices of people around the world so that we can create new vocal identities for people who are unable to speak,” says Rupal Patel, founder and CEO of VocaliD and a speech researcher.
Through her work, Patel says she noticed that the options for synthetic voices are limited. Often, they don’t match at all with the person who uses them. It’s not uncommon, she says, for kids with a speech impairment to use the synthetic voice of an adult man.
“Even though even though they have a method of communication, they can really only be heard in a handful of ways. And that has an impact on empowerment,” she says.
Patel wanted to create unique voices that more closely match the identity of the people who use them. To do it, all she needs is a voice sample from the recipient. Even something very short and simple.
“Like ‘ahhh,’” she says.
VocaliD takes that tiny sample and searches its bank of volunteer donor voices, “who matches them in age and gender and size, and all of those things,” Patel says.
Once a matching donor is identified, VocaliD mixes that voice with the sample and creates a vocal identity unique to the recipient – like John, one of seven people to pilot the program.
Last December, almost eight years to the day from when he was first diagnosed with ALS, he got his voice back.
“Now, thanks to Rupal and her amazing team, I have a significant piece of what made me unique back,” John says.
“When they played it, immediately, my throat just tightened and the tears started to come because I actually, in that voice, could identify John,” Linda says. “I don’t even know how to explain it. It was like hearing somebody I’d heard before, like an old friend.”
“For the first time in seven years, I have a voice that no one else in the world has or can buy. It’s all mine, and I could not be more thankful,” John says.
John doesn’t use this voice — his voice — exclusively, just yet. There are some kinks to work out because it runs on a different device and software than he’s used to.
But he hopes that one day soon, people will recognize him every time he speaks by his own unique voice, as John Gregoire, and he’ll fully reclaim one thing he thought was gone forever.
