When introducing himself, Tristram Ingham often begins with a te reo Māori greeting before breaking into English. The New Zealand-native has a voice that's kind, soft, and sure, with every word carefully chosen and placed. As a physician, academic researcher, and disability community leader, Ingham's words are his power.
Ingham has facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD), which causes progressive muscle degeneration starting in the face, shoulders, and arms, and can ultimately lead to the inability to speak, feed oneself, or in some cases, blink the eyes. In 2013, he began using a wheelchair, and in recent years he has noticed changes in his voice.
"I find that by the end of a long day, just bringing up my voice gets a bit harder," he says, recounting a recent, frustrating incident: "I had to give a conference presentation just last month, and it turned out that, on the day, I wasn't able to deliver it because of my breathing. So I had to get someone else to present for me, even though I had written it."
In the future, it is possible Ingham may not be able to use his speaking voice at all. "I'm very aware on a professional level that using my voice is getting harder. I am aware that when I get more fatigued, I get quieter, harder to understand," he says, noting the cognitive dissonance of a progressive condition. "But on a human level, I put that out of my mind, because what can one do about it?"
This fall, Apple launched its new Personal Voice feature, available with iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and macOS Sonoma. With Personal Voice, users at risk of speech loss can create a voice that sounds like them by following a series of text prompts to capture 15 minutes of audio. Apple has long been at the forefront of neural text-to-speech technology. With Personal Voice, Apple is able to train neural networks entirely on-device to advance speech accessibility while protecting users' privacy.
"Disability communities are very mindful of proxy voices speaking on our behalf," Ingham says. "Historically, providers have spoken for disabled people, family have spoken for disabled people. If technology can allow a voice to be preserved and maintained, that's autonomy, that's self-determination."
Ingham created his Personal Voice for Apple's "The Lost Voice," in which he uses his iPhone to read aloud a new children's book of the same name created for International Day of Persons with Disabilities. When he tried the feature for the first time, Ingham was surprised to find how easy it was to create, and how much it sounded like him.
