I dimly recall someone on this group, from Canada I believe, saying she was having recordings made of her voice in anticipation of losing her ability to speak. Might have been several years ago.
I'm in the process of getting a DynaVoxTech Xpress talking box. The speech therapist at UW Med Center had a number of different models for demo and I was most impressed with the Xpress in terms of physical size (Too big and I'll never have it when I need it; I have trouble remembering to keep a notebook handy) and the software. It is highly customizable to the user's personal needs and whims. It's also apparently going to cost me some money; Medicare pays 80% and then my back-up insco will apply the remainder to deductible and out-of-pocket.
http://www.dynavoxtech.com/products/xpress/ My daughter was in favor of just getting an iPad and using existing apps, which would be much less expensive, but the Xpress will do so much more.
Text to Speech DemoI'm going to have to settle for one of the off-the-shelf voices because I don't have any recordings except perhaps the voice mail greeting for my cell phone <g>.
