We never give too much attention to our voice – it is one of the things we take for granted. However, there are millions of people around the world who were either born with a speech impairment or lost their voice because of a stroke, or some serious disease like Parkinson’s or Cerebral Palsy. Learning new ways to communicate either using sign language or any other accessible device with limited/generic synthetic voices may not be a weapon of choice for many, especially the ones who lose their perfect voice later in their lives because of a disease. That is where VocaliD comes into the picture. VocaliD is a company that is trying to bridge all sorts of gaps and helping people with speech impairments communicate using natural voices. But what does that exactly mean? VocaliD consists of a team led by Dr. Patel who listens to the limited sounds of patients with speech impairments. These sounds help the team understand what this person’s voice may sound like if it were high pitched, raspy, etc. Once they have the patient’s sounds, they look for a surrogate – a person of the same age and sex who has no speech impairment. This [...]