Angela Crelly

Voice banking is mainly known for helping individuals with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis also known as ALS (Pattee & Plowman, 2019). ALS does not have a cure and people with this condition eventually lose their speech (Pattee & Plowman, 2019; Britton et al., 2011). The trouble with ALS is the individual does not know how fast they will lose these abilities. One day their speech may be normal and the next day you can start hearing differences until they are no longer able to produce speech. This makes it crucial for an individual to get their voice banked swiftly, and to completely understand their voice banking options to make informed decisions before they lose speech completely. In recent months, two software options, are being routinely offered to individuals banking in Minnesota: ModelTalker and Acapela. When an individual decides to bank their voice they have to make an informed, efficient decision. The purpose of my UROP was to provide a side-by-side comparison specific to both current software options offered to at home banking in Minnesota due to ALS. A second purpose was to develop new standardized samples of a generic synthetic voice, a synthetic voice created using ModelTalker software, and another using Acapela software, for the purpose of allowing persons with ALS the opportunity to hear the differences in each type of voice prior to deciding if and how to bank. This way these individuals can see clear, unbiased facts about these two programs, along with practical recommendations for at-home banking.