Helsinki city provided us brilliant setting for our 10th meeting and Hotel Scandic sponsored participation. Project is a pro bono project and their help was essential. Meetings are public and each time meeting we have a different host.
Host Kati van der Hoeven opened our 10th meeting and later Kati and Henning van der Hoeven impressed the audience by demonstrating their way to communicate with air letters. Kati had news, her new book ”Living Underwater” will be published in October.
Kajo Apuvälineet set up an eye control device for testing and that was thrilling experience to those who had never tried it before.
Irina Savolainen told about communication, how complex it is. She also brought news from a seminar in Australia. People had discussed about inclusion. One other interesting topic was; do people get emotionally attached to their ACC devices or wheelchairs. Kati and Niilo Virta both had no such emotions to either. Irina had news, she and three ACC-users have started a joint (o)saammeko jutella – blog
We enjoyed a world premiere, a rap song ”Edelleen edellä” about AAC, lyrics & song by Niilo and his voice system! Niilo studies economics and is also an entrepreneur.
Code Q and ceo Tapio Koivuniemi got applauses; since the last year Finnish children have had synthetic voice. This change has been very welcomed by the children. Tapio told also about personal voice they have made for a client, it sounded very natural.
Susanne Magnusson from Acapela Group and Kati demonstrated Kati’s English synthetic voice made for Kati. Last year voice actor Mikaela Moisio recorded the voice in Acapela My Own Voice app. Technology takes big leaps and gets also more affordable, quality of the voice was pleasant. Someone in the audience commented shouldn’t we all save our voice for the future – good question!
Many thanks to all presenters and the audience; we had a lovely afternoon and conversations.
People most often want to work and help others and using ACC isn’t an obstacle, just an alternative way to communicate.
Day ended with Eyes Can Tell- short documentary. Finnish version of the documentary Puhuva katse can be seen in YLE Areena.
We currently work with editor to finish next documentary work title: Beauty and the Wheelchair and hopefully can show it on our next meeting. Kati is the protagonist in both documentaries.
Our 11th meeting will be in Spring 2020 in the same location and the host will be Niilo.
Heidi Majander, co-ordinator
It was a great pleasure to meet you again, especial Kati, Henning and Heidi. It is so very nice to see the communication is possible in different ways, with and without text to speech.
I liked Kati’s TTS voice she used during her presentation, in my mind it fits her well! (Thank you Mikaela!!). I’m glad that Kati likes the voice and use it during speech.
I hope Acapela now can develop a good Spanish and Finnish voice to Kati, from the voice she already has.
I feel so proud to be a part of this meeting, to be able to help people to communicate!
Susanne Magnusson
Senior Sales Manager
Acapela Group
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