Bank that Voice Friends!

Hey Tek-Ninjas! So, recently I had the chance to show some colleagues how well Message Banking works. It is really a pretty amazing tool for folks who are wanting to capture their voice, or that of a loved one and use that voice in their speech generating device.

I was aware that banked messages can than be downloaded and installed into Communicator 5 software, and grouped into categories. What I did not know was that users can also import their banked messages with categories into Grid 3 as well. This was brought to my attention by Chicago Tobii-Dynavox Solutions Consultant, McKenzie Mok.

Boston's Children Hospital (BCH) teamed up with Tobii Dynavox to create this free tool. For clarification, BCH defines "Message Banking as: Digitally recording and storing words, phrases, sentences, personally meaningful sounds using one’s natural voice, inflection and intonation. These messages are catalogued as .wav files and may then be linked to messages in a variety of augmentative communication technologies or sound storage files. This will allow you to ‘retrieve’ a message and speak it in your own voice but does not allow you to create novel messages by spelling."

Message Banking can be performed with a free mytobiidynavox account, the Message Banking service is also free.

It is easy to record your voice, and categorize the phrases as you deem appropriate. I did not make this video, it was made by the SLP John Costello of BCH, and I think it demonstrates the process really well.

 So the next steps are to upload the web files into your communication software. In the following video I demonstrate how to do this in both Communicator 5 and Grid 3. 

Happy Therapy!