2:20am March 21, 2015

Speech advantages, and AAC wishes

Lots of people have been telling me that my morning staff person has a client who can normally speak, and who my speech patterns sound incredibly similar to. They’d have to be incredibly similar, because normally Vermont staff are so big on confidentiality they’d never even say this much. So it would take a big surprise to jolt them ought of their unwillingness to even acknowledge another client exists.

In California if you share staff with another client, you’ve probably met them. Because staff double up or triple up or more with clients for recreation or to save time and money carpooling. It has its advantages but it does kind of destroy confidentiality. I used to make staff and case managers leave my apartment to take phone calls. Because otherwise I heard all kinds of stuff about other clients I didn’t feel comfortable knowing.

Anyway an advantage of speech is it’s more personal and colloquial. I can’t type the way I talk. Typin’ like this feels forced usually, even if it’s how I’d say it. But speaking like that puts people at ease socially and makes me feel a little more like myself. But it’s just not worth the cost. I want AAC that will sound informal like that. I’m sick or every voice being either the blandest possible voice, or so posh you have to laugh.

I want a California Okie voice. Because that’s mostly what I am. Would be cool if such voices had a slider you could use to tell it how much Southern and how much Californian to sound like, because most Okies I know, including family members, have a wide range within that sliding scale, and many of us slide along the scale depending on who we’re talking to and other circumstances.

Would be nice also to see an assortment of realistic Southern USA voices, of all regions and income levels, as well as rural voices from around the country, Canadian voices, American Indian voices, Black voices, Latin@ voices, etc. But you never see that except as novelty voices – the “rapper” voice, the “lonesome Texas cowboy” voice, etc. I want voices that sound like my poor and working-class relatives, from the south and otherwise. I want voices that sound like immigrants, like my Swedish great-grandma. But this never happens even though it’s trivially easy to create truly high quality voices of these sorts. Want a New York accent? Boston? Old Vermonter? Good luck finding one. :-/

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