Apple has unveiled a short film directed by Taika Waititi (Thor: Ragnarok, Thor: Love and Thunder) to showcase two key features in its iOS 17 update, focusing on speech accessibility. The features, named Personal Voice and Live Speech, are designed to assist users at risk of speech loss.
Personal Voice allows individuals facing speech loss to create a customized voice that closely resembles their own. Utilizing on-device machine learning, this feature is trained by having someone speak a series of text prompts aloud on an iPhone or iPad.
Live Speech, the second highlighted feature, enables the device to speak aloud typed-out phrases. This can be particularly beneficial for nonspeaking individuals, who possess diverse speech patterns or disabilities, or are at risk of losing their ability to speak due to conditions such as muscular dystrophy or ALS.
The short film, released ahead of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities on Dec. 3, follows the journey of a young girl and her furry friend on a mission to recover the latter’s missing voice. The narrative emphasizes the poignant moments enabled by Apple’s speech accessibility features, with a focus on a father-daughter interaction. Watch below:
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Dr. Tristram Ingham, a real-life user of Personal Voice, stars as the father and narrator in the film. Ingham, a physician, associate professor, and disability advocate from New Zealand, lives with facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD), a condition causing progressive muscle degeneration and potential speech loss.
“I’ve got three grandchildren. I love to read them bedtime stories,” said Ingham, who has facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD), a degenerative condition that can lead to speech loss. “They come and stay the night quite often, and they love stories about sea creatures, tsunamis, things like that. And I just want to be able to ensure that I can keep doing that into the future.”
Apple’s commitment to accessibility is further demonstrated through the film, showcasing the efforts of tech companies to make their platforms and products inclusive. Other accessibility features introduced by Apple this year include Point and Speak, aimed at users with vision disabilities, and Assistive Access, designed for individuals with cognitive disabilities, offering a more focused device interface.
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