‘La vida es hoy’: Esteban Bullrich, a well-known Argentinian politician diagnosed with ALS, continues speaking thanks to “my-own-voice”

Esteban Bullrich relies on my-own-voice, a voice banking solution from Acapela Group that enables him to continue speaking with a digital version of his voice, as he is currently struggling with his ability to speak.

 

Esteban Bullrich, is a citizen of Argentina, a father of 5 and a well-known politician. He was recently diagnosed with ALS. He discovered his diagnosis after several months of consultations and decided to continue working while facing this disease and all the while, contributing to bring awareness on ALS. He recently resigned from the Senate and is now deeply involved in the Foundation he created.

Since Esteban Bullrich’s voice was already too damaged to make recordings, Acapela’s team used existing recordings of his voice (made before the illness), to generate a digital voice that reflects this part of his identity. This is the aim of my-own-voice: allowing people to keep speaking with the essential part of themselves, the unique voice that identifies each and every one of us.

“La vida es hoy”: Esteban Bullrich argued that the disease does not prevent him from continuing his duties in the Senate: “I made a commitment to the people of Buenos Aires and with all Argentinians and my commitment will not be impacted by this diagnosis. There is so much still to do to build the Argentina that we want for ourselves and for our children”.

“This disease does not define me. I live a happy and wonderful life and this challenge shows me the importance of doing more things and doing them better. I have the invaluable support of my family, my friends and my team. Through them and for them and I am supported by God. I will face this new state of affairs with the certainty that everything happens for a reason. I’m going to discover the reasons and make the very best of it,” Esteban Bullrich said.

“We are very grateful to Esteban Bullrich for sharing his journey with ALS and the experience of my-own-voice. Voice banking service works fine to provide a digital voice to individuals, but timing is a major issue. It is essential for the patient to record as soon as possible, which is a very difficult step to move forward on when facing the diagnostic. Esteban Bullrich’s testimonial will both give more visibility of the voice banking possibility in Argentina and more widely in South America and help the voice topic to raise in priority steps, to properly assist the patient” commented Nicolas Mazars, Market Owner and Business Developer at Acapela Group.

 

About Esteban Bullrich Foundation:
https://www.estebanbullrichfoundation.org

 

About my-own-voice:
With ‘my-own-voice’, users can keep speaking and communicating using a digital copy of their voice, helping them maintain their identity. Only 50 sentences (or good quality recordings) are required to create the voice, based on neural text to speech, technology breakthrough. The digital voice, created with the end user’s recordings, can be used with an assistive device to read any sentence, keeping the essence of the original in terms of timbre, accent and intonation. The voice and way of speaking are instantly recognizable. Over 6 600+ additional patients have subscribed to the service, 4 300+ voices were created and about 1500+ delivered with my-own-voice and we keep the path of adding new voices.

 About Acapela Group:
Create your digital voice with 50 sentences.
Acapela Group, European leader of voice solutions since 30 years, creates digital voices that sound different, based on Neural text to speech. ‘My-own-voice’ service is a voice banking solution that offers individuals diagnosed with speech or language disorders the possibility to create a digital copy of their own voice to keep communicating with this essential part of their identity.