For the hearing-impaired, their voices—how they pronounce and articulate words—deteriorate over time because they can no longer hear themselves speak, eventually leading to the deterioration of their sense of self and a lowered quality of life. The changes in their voices apply to the volume (often talking to loudly or too quietly) and intonation (which affect the meaning of the words). When hearing-impaired people struggle with control over their speaking, they tend to lose confidence and speak less and less until they stop speaking entirely, their voices forever gone. The Thai Health Promotion Foundation sees the opportunity to help the hearing-impaired reclaim their ability to speak so that they can maintain their quality of life.

Our voices is unique to us. It helps us define and express our identity as a human being. It’s one of our most fundamental ways for us to have self-agency, or control over one’s own world. Our social relations also depend on it.

The creative idea is to make sure that the hearing-impaired never lose their voice by making their voice visible to them for the first time.

We created ‘SAVE MY VOICE’ - the first speech training platform that let hearing-impaired people see their voice so they can train themselves and be more confident when speaking with others.

By combining technologies such as voice recognition AI, word to text, and voice data visualization.

To improve the quality of life for more than 400,000 hearing impaired people in Thailand by offering a coach that can train them anywhere, anytime and prevent their voice from being lost. The approach is

a useful online AI-enabled speech-training tool that is easy to use and is effective.

With ‘SAVE MY VOICE’ the hearing-impaired benefit from user-friendly interface where they can train their speaking with just one button. When pressed, the hearing-impaired are given word exercise to practice on and record. Unlike other language training program, ‘Save My Voice’ works on voice data in different perspective. The AI technology analyses the input in 3 dimensions that make up the accuracy: the high-low tone, the starting syllable and vowel, and the length of the word. The data is then visualized into user-friendly feedback, telling the user which word is heard by the AI and giving scores and suggestions in areas to improve. More than 1,000 words make up the 100 exercises designed by language experts from Chulalongkorn University to give the hearing-impaired practice on the phases and sentences essential in daily life, thereby allowing them to save their voices from being lost.

• ‘SAVE MY VOICE’ had over 4,500 visitors with total over 300,000 minutes time spent on the platform.

• ‘SAVE MY VOICE’ generated high engagement, hearing-impaired people spent 11 minutes on average in each session. They also leave positive comments and share it on social media. Earning free media worth over 5 million baht.

• ‘SAVE MY VOICE’ is adopted as an online trainer not only for hearing impaired but also those who have speech-related problem.

• Hearing impaired people in Thailand now have an accessible tool to help them stay connected within society and improve their quality of life.