Do you like my voice? Stakeholder perspectives about the acceptability of synthetic child voices in three South African languages

What is already known on this subject Caregivers, service providers, peers and other communication partners play a substantial role in a child AAC user's early communicative success, and their acceptance of AAC ultimately influences the effectiveness of the intervention. When communication partners advocate and support the inclusion of specific speech-generating devices, AAC applications, and suitable synthetic voices, children are more willing to consistently utilize the technology. What this paper adds to the existing knowledge As literature focusing on stakeholder perspectives from low- and middle-income countries is less common than research from high-income countries, and often lacks input from multi-perspective stakeholders, our study offers a unique perspective from South African children with expressive communication difficulties, caregivers of those children, their speech-language pathologists and teachers, about the quality, acceptability and utility of synthetic speech in under-resourced languages. What are the potential or clinical implications of this work? Our research highlights that stakeholders would prefer South African languages and dialects on South African speech-generating devices, rather than relying on devices that only incorporate British or US English voices. The development of synthetic speech in under-resourced languages has the potential to support marginalized AAC communities. Children with expressive communication difficulties would finally be able to participate in class and do so with a voice that matches their age, gender and social and linguistic background. This paper highlights the importance of providing a variety of synthetic voice options and emphasizes the significance of introducing novel voices for high-tech AAC to children in a manner that respects and aligns with their linguistic and cultural backgrounds.