Daniel Challis was born and brought up near Walsall, surrounded by family members with distinctive regional accents. Yet his communication aid sounds nothing like them, instead vocalising in a robotic version of received pronunciation. The 18-year-old, who has cerebral palsy and is unable to speak, is appealing for people to audition to provide his new voice – if they have the right accent.
“I feel uncomfortable when using my current voice and I want to sound like people around me,” said Challis. “It’s very important to me because if I wasn’t disabled, I would not be using a computer to communicate.”
He was inspired to launch his appeal by the comedian and Britain’s Got Talent winner Lee Ridley, known by his stage name Lost Voice Guy, who last year changed the voice on his speech app to a geordie accent.
“When you look at Lee speaking with that accent, it’s like it’s part of him,” said Challis’s mother, Sarah. “I think Daniel just wants the same, to sound like the people around him, like he should have sounded. He would have gone to the local school and would have picked up a local accent, but he’s got this robotic one instead.”
Challis, who is a huge Harry Potter fan, has asked for anyone interested to send in an audio clip of themselves reading the first few lines of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. He will then whittle them down to a shortlist before deciding who he thinks is the best fit.
“It’s about finding what he believes he sounds like, because it might be different to what I think,” said his mother. “I’m being quite open because I think he’s got to be able to choose whatever he wants.”
The chosen person will have to spend a number of hours in a recording studio in order for their voice to be captured in enough detail to be loaded on to the speech programme.
“It’s a long process so whoever gives Daniel their voice is obviously also giving their time to create that voice. Whoever that is, it’s going to be really special to Dan,” said Sarah Challis. “I think it might sound quite weird if they were able to meet afterwards and both talk together.”
Daniel Challis said he thought his new voice “will feel strange to start with and will take time to get used to, but it will feel amazing.”
He lives with his family in the town of Aldridge, just north-east of Walsall, and said he was looking for a local accent and “a more natural voice that fits me”.
The communication aid he uses to speak operates using eye-gaze technology, meaning he selects letters, words and common phrases using his eyes, which are then converted into spoken sentences.
“There must be people all over the country that have all got communication aids, that maybe all want to look at having their own accent and their own identities,” his mother said. “Daniel is going to residential college in September where there are going to be people from different parts of the country, and he wants to sound like he comes from where he comes from, and not a robot.”
