Voice Banking

Voice banking is the recording of your natural voice while it is still natural and strong, for the possible eventuality of losing your speech.

You can voice bank on a mobile phone, computer, or digital voice recorder. As long as the recordings are produced in MP3 format, they can be used later within a speech generating device.

You can also use one of several online services to record yourself speaking a set of sentences into computer software. The software then takes these sentences, breaks them down into parts and uses these to create a synthetic voice which can speak anything, not just the sentences you recorded. The synthetic voice should sound somewhat like your natural voice but does depend on the quality of the recordings and the clarity of your speech at the time of recording.

Talklink Trust (Wahanga Tū Kōrero) are specialists in the area of Communication Assistive Technology / Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) and can provide guidance on your voice banking journey.

You do not have to refer to Talklink for voice banking. Talklink have put together a variety of resources, including videos and a comparison table of the different voice banking services, here.

You can also watch a video of our own Natalie Gauld and Chris Kemp talking about their experience with voice banking, here.