Making my voice and owning its future.

Abstract

This article explores disabled experience and the future of technologies relating to augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). This field includes people's use of AAC devices, typically in combination with other modes of communication, including vocalising, revoicing and body language. Such devices have speech technology and digital voices built into them and we will consider who could be said to have ownership of these technologies. We will also explore the role that people who use AAC have in making their AAC-and how this also contributes to shaping its future. The meanings of 'voice', 'making' and 'ownership' in the context of AAC are many. Yet too often the relationship between these is presented as if it is singular and straightforward. This paper will start by considering the most prevalent, obvious interpretations and build alternative and more complex directions from there. One of the authors uses AAC and is constantly personalising his software, editing and remaking it to reflect his needs and current thinking, representing his voice in ways that he feels ownership of; another is a life partner and can also be thought of as being part of his AAC. Two authors are researchers in an art school, where the act of making things in studios and workshops is inseparable from creative authorship and ownership. Together, all four authors are exploring the meaning and making of speech technology, experimenting with and appropriating it in ways not anticipated by its developers. This paper is a hybrid of voices: disabled and non-disabled; academic and non-academic coresearchers; designers and codesigners. Its unconventional format is intended to reflect the unconventional relationship between the researchers and to represent the conversation between these different voices.