From speaking with loved ones to reading a bedtime story, your voice can be an important part of what makes you, you. Yet each year millions lose their ability to talk due to degenerative diseases like Motor Neurone Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Muscular Dystrophy, cancers and dementia.

Personal Voice is an innovative new accessibility feature from Apple. Designed for those with speech loss, it uses machine learning on your iPhone, iPad or Mac to recreate your distinctive and unique way of speaking, so you can continue to communicate through your Apple devices in your own voice, even after losing your physical ability to talk.

The work was designed to raise awareness of this life-changing feature.

To raise awareness of Personal Voice, we focused on an intimate use of the human voice - telling a bedtime story. This insight came directly from those living with speech loss - who highlighted this moment as being one where using your own voice would be most important to them.

We then worked with disability advocates to craft a brand-new bedtime tale called ‘The Lost Voice.

It tells the story of a young girl and her magical friend, as they search far and wide for the creature’s missing voice, before revealing that we are, in fact, watching a film of the book, which is being narrated by a father with speech loss, to his daughter, via his own Personal Voice.

Those with speech loss often rely on proxy voices to speak on their behalf. Many depend on text-to-speech readers which sound robotic and unnatural. Providers and family often also speak for those without their own physical voices. By recreating a user's unique voice Personal Voice enhances autonomy and self-determination.

Our strategy for the project was to involve those affected by speech loss throughout. We began by consulting with people living with speech loss around the world, before crafting a tale true to their lived experience.

We also cast a genuine user of the technology who developed the work further with us to ensure authenticity and true disability-led representation.

Voiceover is an integral part of the film-making process, especially in narrative film where it guides a viewer through the story.

Uniquely, this film was narrated by a person with speech loss. This was possible due to the use of Apple’s new Personal Voice feature. By digitally recreating our lead cast member’s actual voice on iPhone as a fully synthetic Personal Voice (a process any iPhone user can now do) we were able to then record a narration for our film.

Resulting in a voiceover created without a human voice.

The film was launched for International Day of Persons with Disabilities. The work received over 19 Million views on YouTube, raised global awareness of the Personal Voice feature along with Apple’s commitment to accessibility, and was met with wide acclaim from disability advocates, the press and the general public.

Forbes stated the campaign was “Powerful in its portrayal of the universal message of the critical, life-altering promise of accessible technology in our world”.

Ad Age noted ‘Apple reserves some of its most inspired marketing for its accessibility features.’

And Steve Gleason, ex-NFL star and advocate for those living with ALS (Motor Neurone Disease), called the work ‘A tale of technology at its best. Life-changing.’