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How a 22-year-old chatterbox prepares to lose her voice permanently

31 July 2017

Lucy is the youngest person with MND in Scotland

Meet Lucy. She’s a 22-year-old woman who lives in the north-east of Scotland. .

The illness can cause weaknesses in the tongue, lips, vocal cords and chest – speech can become faint, slurred or unclear.

• In detail:

One option that Lucy may need in the future is a digital device that produces speech, .

But our voices are unique to us and are a .

Picking from a limited selection of options means using voice which might bear little resemblance to how they spoke before they were ill.

The documentary followed Lucy on her visit to , a research project at the University of Edinburgh aiming to create personalised synthetic voices.

She was recorded speaking a selection of 400 sentences that include the various combinations of English speech sounds.

To generate the synthetic voice, a person’s voice is mixed with a base of other, donor voices.

Phillipa Rewaj, a Speech and Language Therapist, compares it to buying bespoke paint: .

For the best results, the person would record their voice before there has been any effect on their speech.

But if there has already been some impact on the speech of the person, it may be possible to ‘repair’ some of the voice by adding in higher levels of the donor voice.

Lucy makes a synthetic voice

MND sufferer Lucy Lintott goes to the voicebank to create a personalised synthetic voice

Lucy’s sister’s Laura also recorded her voice, allowing a clearer synthetic version to be created.

Speak:Unique is in a trial phase and, while it hopes to become more widely available, it doesn’t currently offer a bespoke service to all patients.

Recording your voice is one thing.

But what’s it actually like using a digital communication device to speak to other people?

Lucy asked one of the best-known users of a communication aids in the UK, Lee Ridley, about his experiences.

Despite not being able to speak naturally, he has a job where your voice is an essential tool – stand up comedy.

Lee performs under the name Lost Voice Guy and