ATU613 – Acapela Group and My-Own-Voice with Nicolas Mazars

Hi, this is Nicolas Mazars, and I’m the inclusive market sales manager and my-own-voice product owner at the Acapela Group, part of Tobii Dynavox’s company. And this is your Assistive Technology Update.

Hello and welcome to your Assistive Technology Update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist individuals with disabilities and special needs. I’m your host, Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. Welcome to episode 613 of Assistive Technology Update. It’s scheduled to be released on February 24th, 2023.

On today’s show, we’re super excited to welcome Nicolas Mazars from Acapela Group and he’s here to tell us about their different digital voices they offer, as well as my-own-voice, a voice banking service where you can use your own voice as that kind of digital voice that we’re all kind of used to. Let’s go ahead and jump into our interview.

Listeners in the world of technology, be it in AAC, text to speech, and other accommodations, the digital voice is something that we’re all very familiar with. Our guest today is from Acapela Group and he’s here to tell us about how they’re changing the face, or I guess the voice of digital voices. Nicolas, welcome to the show.

Oh, thank you. Good morning everyone, and thank you for having me to the show.

Yes, I really appreciate you coming on and I can’t wait to get talking about Acapela Group, but before we do that, can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?

Yes. So my name is Nicolas Mazars, in French way or Mazas, and I’m based in France, in Europe. I’ve been working at the Acapela for now about 15 years already.

Oh wow.

I joined 2008 and now Acapela is part of a bigger company now, an umbrella, Tobii Dynavox’s company. But what we’ve been doing so far, all those years, and so far, the Acapela is what we call text to speech solutions for different markets. But that also include, which is the one I’m in charge of, inclusive market, or accessibility or assistive, which basically includes different sub areas. Let give me some examples. Blindness community, low visions, speech impairment, all these kind of purposes to have a society a bit more inclusive. That’s what we try to offer and to serve with the voice solution from Acapela.

Awesome. Well, Nicolas, let’s dig a little bit deeper into that. Can you tell us what the voice solutions are for these populations?

Sure. So Acapela, so we’ve been around for now 30 years, a bit more. And we have a capacity portfolio of 35 languages and around 200 voices. And basically those voices they use on a daily basis to offer some support for accessibility matters. So I’ll give you an example. If we look around the main part of accessibility, at least for what it concerns Acapela, which is the speech impairment. The way we use the Acapela voices are in what we call some kind of AC devices. So AC stands for augmentative and alternative communication devices. So basically they’re like devices like similar to iPad for instance, and something you can use for someone nonverbal. It will use the device to communicate to the world, and by communicating you will use some voices and those are the Acapela voices. So that’s one example of the voices and where they’re used for.

But also this is true for the blind people to just navigate the computer with some screen readers, some voices from Acapela. But it can be also for, and that a funny story, when you hang around on the streets, sometimes you can hear on the cross lights some voice over giving some instruction to cross the pedestrian or even in the lift or elevators, you have some voice saying first floor, second, whatever. Those voices everywhere around you are for accessibility matters at the first place. But of course they can serve for all the population, but that’s where you can basically hear the Acapela of voices.

Awesome. And yeah, when you kind of bring that up, I forget how many times I hear those voices. Our elevators here at the office talk to you and tell you what floor. And I don’t even notice it. I’m so used to it, but boy do I notice it at places that don’t have the voice to tell me what floor I’m on.

Yeah, yeah. And that’s the funny part. I mean, like I said, I’ve been doing that for many years, and now when I’m traveling around the world in different airports and sometimes I hear the voices, and I’m just like, oh, is this Acapela voices or it’s something different? So that’s the kind of distortion for my day-to-day task. But that’s really appreciating to see all this kind of improvements of the society for better inclusion, but still a long way to cover all the aspects, right?

Oh, for sure. I think there always will be. There’s always another way of accessibility. It seems that we always kind of find. Nicolas, kind of tell me a little bit, you said there’s like 200 different voices. What kind of sets these voices kind of apart from others? What makes Acapela group kind of special?

So the first way we try to answer the market, because there’s two ways to create voices. You do on your own, just as any kind of text to speech supplier company, you say, oh, I want to create a voice, whatever. And you do the voice basically, right? What we try to do at Acapela, we listen to the markets, give you an example, two or three years ago, and that came from whatever partner in the market. There was a strong demand for a voice, a languages that we didn’t have so far at that time, which was the African American English. So it’s starting from that angle, something from the market, from a specific request. And the way that we build up to the final delivery is the order process from Acapela. So basically we do the same way to other companies like going to the recording studio, using a speaker, doing all the process of data, creating the voice. But we try to involve partners, and communities, and users at each steps. That’s the way we do it different than other companies. And that’s just an example, African American but it’s true with children voices.

For instance, the one we asked for so many years, even when I joined Acapela the first year, the first meetings and the first trade show in US, which happened to be in, it was in Minneapolis, Closing the Gap. The first meeting I had was like, we need some children voices from Acapela, because at that time we have just other voices and that’s where we started to think about doing something, but we just did them later, like 20 what? 2010 or 2011? But we always try to listen to the markets and answering for the markets. Of course, we can’t do everything at the same time, but that’s always the way we’ve been trained to do so. And that’s true for the latest solution, like the voice banking solution to create custom voice as well. Exactly the same way it was built up from market feedback somehow.

Awesome. And you just brought up my next question. Can you tell us about your kind of voice banking and the my-own-voice kind of service?

Sure. So, like I said, we have a regular portfolio of 200 voices of 55 languages. There are what we call public voices for any supplier of voice solutions. So we license them to those clients. But basically what happened in 2015, two users, one from US, Chicago, one from Europe, Netherlands, they reach out to Acapela and basically they were asking to create a custom voice for them, their voice. Instead of using the regular voice, they wanted to have their own digital voice or copy of their voice. That’s was where we started to think about something called my-own-voice Services. A way to create your own digital voice and use it when you need it, instead of using the regular voice from Acapela. That’s when we started to develop my-own-voice Services and now the concept’s eight years later. And we went through all those updates, technology changes, and so on.

And it’s way different than before. But now the way it works is really easy. At home, I mean, you still have to go to the recording studio, but just using your regular computer, desktop, laptop, a microphone, external one, and just the internet connection, you will go on the website from Acapela, the [inaudible 00:09:20] voice, the move.acapela-group.com. You go on the website and from that website you are prompt with 50 phrases, five, zero, you have to record, which takes about 10 to 15 minutes. And we use that to train. And thanks to the machine learning techniques or AI, whatever you want to call that, but it’s more like machine learning techniques, we use that to train and create your copy, your digital voice as a copy. And that’s give you some kind of personalization, your own text to speech voice to communicate instead of using a regular voice from Acapela. And that’s where we put a lot of emphasis. We have a lot of development for this solution. And matter of fact, we are about to release the fourth version of the services in two months from now. And that would be called my-own-voice version four.

Oh, that’s excellent. I’m sure that’s great for folks with progressive disorders. I think of ALS and other things where I don’t need a device to speak for me now, but one day I’m definitely going to. That’s great because I can still, when I want to communicate with family and friends, they’ll hear my voice, not kind of the machine voice, because even if it has the inflection and maybe sounds a little bit better than what we think of as the old school, very computerized kind of voice, it’s nice to actually be able to have your own voice in there, and it really only takes 50 phrases for it to be able to fill in the gaps and everything?

Exactly, and that’s way different than before. Initially when we released the first version, we started the process, the concept was the same, exactly the same, but the technology was different. And at that time, back then, so it was around 2016 more or less, you were asked to record, like for eight hours, 1,500 phrases, a long process. So imagine for someone diagnosed with ALS, like you just mentioned, that was kind of impossible, or only at early stages of the diagnosis when the voice is still clear, it was an option, but it was not really a good way to do it. But some of them have tried, not even 50, but they tried the services and the quality of the voice produced was, let’s say, so so. Not that good. So imagine all those hours recording, you know, you expect something else. But the concept was there and I was like, we have to push here strongly.

And at some point it was around version two or three. At version two we changed, we switched technology to machine learning, reduced the effort, create the record down to 350 phrases, which was around one hour. And since version three, it’s just 50. So it takes literally 10, maximum 20 minutes if you have some kind of [inaudible 00:12:13]. But the purpose is to record as soon as possible when the voice is still clear, and then you can really easily and quickly get your digital copy next day, because the process is really fast. So that’s the way it is today.

Oh, that’s just amazing, because I know originally, and I don’t even think it was Acapela, I know other places have kind of, but you pretty much had to record every phrase you wanted to use and that was pretty much it. I mean, it was essentially just a digital voice recorder with buttons is all it kind of was. So that’s amazing that you can do so little. I mean, only have to do the 50 phrases, and I mean I’m sure that’ll just get smaller and smaller kind of as time goes on too.

Yeah, I mean potentially, and I mean, you could, that you’re right. When we started the process, and it wasn’t only Acapela, but we were using different technology, what we called unique selection, text to speech voices or technology. And at that time, the purpose was to get as much content as possible. It was creating a phonetics based, or the more you were recording, the better, basically on paper for the voice. But as we switched technology to more like machine learning, now the concept is not just to, it’s not about recording as much as possible, it’s just… The purpose is to define the voice characteristics. If you have an accent, the [inaudible 00:13:37] and stuff like that. And we just need basically [inaudible 00:13:40] of sound, I mean, 50 phrases. And based on that we can replicate something which is really close to your voice. Even with, I mean, with version four, it’s pretty much impressive.

Like my accent in English, the French accent will just replicate perfectly. So that’s really, again, thanks to technology, but we had to learn the hard way. And going through the first version was really hard, because the concept was there, but just the effort was just crazy. And so, now it’s much more easier. Potentially, maybe we could reduce to less maybe, I don’t know, 10, 20. But there’s always a trade between the effort, and the way you would process data, you will use them. And imagine, let’s say tomorrow you have to reduce to 20. That might sound even better, because some 50 to 20, although in terms of time, that won’t be like a huge gain. But still the issue you might have, which is a drawback, someone having ALS, could we call those 20? But some reason we have some issue or it’s not exactly accurate, or you need more data and you get back to the user later, one, two months later you are not sure you’ll be able to collect the same content.

So that’s always a trade where you prefer to create a bit more right now and process of data, rather than doing a lower just for the sake of the new T and so on. So, I’m not sure it will go down. It will go down for that purpose of usage. And knowing the fact now there’s more interest outside the ALS community, which is today 95% of the users. And we talk about giving you an example, last year we had 3,500 users roughly. So there were mainly ALS users, nowadays, there’s more interest about other communities. So similar neuronal generative disease like PSP, MSA, but also Parkinson, head and neck cancer, and now lately without surprise, more something close to pediatrics, voice for children or teenagers. So that’s the perspective of development and that gives you some kind of insight about my-own-voice four, although I don’t want to discuss everything today, we are still too months away from release. But yeah, potentially, and I will just say, my-own-voice four, we’re expecting two years time from now to have something above 10,000 users on the yearly basis.

Oh wow. That is awesome. Nicolas, I got to give you a chance to kind of brag just a little bit here, because when I was looking at this, I saw that you guys won a couple of awards at CES earlier this year. Can you tell us about those?

Yeah, true. So we’ve been doing CES for a couple of years now, because like I said, we are talking today about accessibility assistive market, but also the voices are used in other industries, like in IVR or telecom industries for call centers, when you call in for some information or reservation, you can have a couple of voices and you’ll just to give you some guidance. The voices are also using the robot in different industry, like gaming. So CES is just one of those show, you want to show up and shed different new things, new languages, new technology, whatever. So we’ve been doing that for a couple of years. But this year, which was like January, we said around September, or it was mid last year, we said we need to do CES 2023 with a specific focus. And because we went through the acquisition by Tobii, we wanted to have a bit more focus on accessibility for different reasons, or the acquisition was one reason. The other one was, we don’t do that much for accessibility when we go to CES, so this is a good time to do it.

So the focus was all in for CES about my-own-voice and specifically the new version of my-own-voice. So that’s the way we started to try how can we do things better? So we basically first were like we need a bit more awareness. So we started to look at the award, we applied for the award, we explained the concept of the services, the way of possible developments. And basically it was announced around September, October we got that award, which was really a game changer for this CES, because then we’re really confident now we do even more. We need to even onsite drag more audience, journalists and awareness around our solution. So with the help of Tobii as well, we have a different from All Access Life company to join us at CES and to talk about the way the eye tracking solution, solutions like the Tobii pilot from Tobii Dynavox was used with a custom voice as my-own-voice version four by Brad, and the voice was made from Daniel, his caregiver.

So there was a complete story around that. And what happened, CES was just a huge success for us, because of the award, but also we got another award onsite from Digital Trends. They tried the solution, they were so impressed about the fact you can create a voice quickly. So that’s really the way we are. We capitalized on the CES award. We got another one from the Digital Trends. We have this support from All Access Life, and that was really amazing. All the people around looking at the solution, the way Brad was communicating with the voice from Dan, that was really amazing. And this is the kind of accomplishment, we just like this is what it is no. All together, all the species, the voice, the eye tracking solution, and the perfect press.

So that was a really significant success in terms of press release, major coverage. But also, and that’s really interesting on the my-own-voice services side. Just give you a rough example, comparing year-on-year 2022 and 2023, just January, we doubled the number of users of the services. So that was really a good one. And also we enjoy it, no? It was really nice with Alexis live with Tobii, Acapela, all the team together in Las Vegas just to start the year. That was just perfect.

No, that is perfect. And it rarely comes together quite so well where all the pieces kind of work like that. So it’s great when it does. I’m glad there’s so many more users, because you brought up, well, just a huge point with any kind of accommodation, if no one knows it’s out there to help them, it doesn’t really help anybody. So being able to get out there and get those kind of things working, and I know none of us do any of this work for awards, but like you said, it helps with the awareness. It helps get the name out there, and it helps people know that these tools are kind of there to help them.

Exactly. And that’s why we really need to put emphasis on about communication. Sometimes we really, I mean, all players, and it’s not only about Acapela or Tobii, all those players in the field, they’re really passionate about what they do. But so much sometimes they forget they have to also make the other piece aware. The market aware what we do for those persons just to communicate, to give a voice to everyone. It’s just a matter of communication. And that should be the case for anyone whatsoever. So sometimes that’s something we should put a bit more emphasis on, communicating about what we do.

Sure, sure, sure. And yeah, and communicating about the communication that you help with, I guess. We got a little bit more time here, Nicolas, not a whole lot, but you’ve kind of told me about some of the consumer input that you’ve had to help you kind of make some things. Do you have a kind of story that you can share with me about someone’s experience using the technology and how it kind of helped them?

Well, I have so many stories, and we try to put every now and then, but yeah, there is so many, but the way they use the solution. But what I really relate to is what my-own-voice services offer to the family side, but also the user when they share some feedback. Not lately, than yesterday, I got a comment from a user saying, I mean, your services is just, I shouldn’t say, it’s like your own promotion, but creating your own voice is just amazing. And just seeing my children crying with my kind of voice back to normal was just an amazing feeling. So thank you guys for what we doing. And when you listen to that, when you read that, I mean, it’s priceless. It gives you so much energy and you just need, think about the next step, what we can do better.

And I mean, we have so many of this kind, on the regular basis. And really, I cannot pick up just one. But this is really the general trend, and what happened with some big players when they make new announcement about amazing technology, sometimes it can be scary for a company like Acapela, because we are pretty much small, although we’re part of a bigger company now, but we always try to keep up with the changes. But I think that’s really good. It’s just the beginning of the voice banking industry. There will be more and more opportunities. Like I said, pediatrics is one things. Also, strangely, the blind user, they were really interesting to create some kind of custom voices. So there’s two different opportunities. And this is just the beginning, and that’s funny when I say so, because I’ve been around for 15 years now, but it looks like, yeah, this is just the beginning of the ride. So it’s like a rollercoaster, but I really like it. And I think that’s, yeah, we are in a good hand for the next couple of years and decades, hopefully.

Well, that’s a great way to think about it, that you’re at the beginning even though you’ve been there for a while. So I hope it feels like that the entire time that you’re there, that makes it a whole heck of a lot easier when you have to get up and go to work every day if it feels brand new and you’re just going to be out there and do some things that make the world a little bit better is always great. Well, Nicolas, if our listeners do want to find out more about Acapela Group, about the my-own-voice and everything else, what’s kind of the best way for them to do that?

So just to visit a website so they can go on the corporate one, which is www.acapela-group.com. This is a corporate website with different markets we serve, the voices, different project we’ve been working on, but then more specifically on the my-own-voice website, they can go to move, I mean, www.move.acapela-group.com. They can go on the website, they can register, they can create their own voice, because that’s also something which is really important to mention as maybe a conclusion, but it is free to register, record, and listen to your voice online, but also on some applications, such as the Tobii [inaudible 00:25:09] talk application, is free of charge. So anyone can try that. On the phone or for real services purposes. But they can go on the website, they can register, they can try the services, and I will suggest you do so, because in any cases, any feedback is always welcome.

Excellent. We will put links down to that in the show notes. Well, Nicolas, thank you so much for coming on today telling us, I learned a heck of a lot even after kind of researching for this. And I think it’s just amazing stuff you guys are doing, and work with so many folks that use the different voice features, either for their own voice or what they have to listen to. And I know that’s always one of the biggest complaints that I get from folks, especially maybe from newer blind users. Do I really have to listen to this voice all the time? So anything you can do to make that more enjoyable for them and just to help folks be able to have their own voice and everything. So it’s great work you guys are doing. Thank you so much for coming on today and telling us all about it.

Thank you very much. And thank you for sharing the news from Acapela.

Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on an Assistive Technology Update? If so, call our listener line at (317) 721-7124. Send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org, or shoot us a note on Twitter @INDATAProject. Our captions and transcripts for the show are sponsored by the Indiana Telephone Relay Access Corporation, or InTRAC. You can find out more about InTRAC at relayindiana.com.

A special thanks to Nicole Prieto for scheduling our amazing guests and making a mess of my schedule. Today’s show is produced, edited, hosted, and fraught over by yours truly. The opinions expressed by our guests are their own and may or may not reflect those of the INDATA Project, Easterseals Crossroads, our supporting partners, or this host. This was your Assistive Technology Update. And I’m Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. We look forward to seeing you next time. Bye-bye.