105377Enhancements to Personalised Speech SynthesisClosedStudyInnovate UKA number of medical conditions can result in the inability to communicate naturally. These can be degenerative diseases, like Motor Neurone Disease and Parkinson's Disease, disorders present from birth, such as Cerebral Palsy; or the result of a brain injury, such as a stroke. Individuals that can no longer communicate naturally, often end up relying on a communication aid. This can be in the form of a tablet or a more specialised eye-gaze machine. These devices, whilst valuable, come pre-installed with a generic voice, that rarely reflect the age, gender or regional accent of the user. Recent advances in speech synthesis technology, have made it possible to create a personalised synthetic voice by using a recording of an individual. Speak:Unique has developed technology that allows patients to record their voice before it is lost and use this in their communication aid. The technology in its current state, does however, have a number of limitations. The first is that synthesis technology lacks the ability to control _how_ a sentence is said e.g. it lacks intonation, emphasis and emotion. These features can subtly alter the meaning of a sentence. Secondly, the technology Speak:Unique has developed requires users to record their voice in a specialised facility in Edinburgh, Scotland. This puts obvious limitations on scalability and accessibility for patients. This grant will deploy cutting edge technology to address these unmet needs and enhance Speak:Unique's offering. It will make them more user-friendly, scalable and accessible, allowing patients to retain an integral part of their identity by communicating in a voice that is identifiably theirs.