“…Using text-to-speech software with PowerPoint to accommodate her significant speech impairment, Glenda delivers powerful presentations wherever she presents….”
~ John Foliot, Co-Founder of Open Web Camp

I begin preparing my presentation by writing the entire text in Microsoft Word. I then break the text into “easy listening” chunks, which I then import into my text-to-speech app Proloquo4Text on my iPad Air. Lastly I make any necessary tweaks to make it sound as human as possible.

To deliver my presentation, I tap my iPad to speak each chunk of text.

What does my synthesized voice sound like?

Here’s my Bold Talk “Go Beyond: Stare Your Fear in the Face and Boldly Go for It!” that I delivered at InBound in Boston, September 2014:

And my accompanying PowerPoint slides:

Concerned about hiring a public speaker who communicates differently?

Consider these well-known public speakers and orators:

• King George VI: the subject of the Oscar-winning The King’s Speech, struggled with a stutter and a stammer to address his British subjects.
  Favourite line from the movie: ”Because I have a right to be heard. I have a voice!”
• Helen Keller: born deafblind, learned to speak and spent much of her life giving moving speeches and lectures that are still quoted today.
  One her most relevant quotes here is: “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”
• Stephen Hawking: living with Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS), communicates via a text-to-speech device to deliver lectures worldwide on astrophysics.
• Roger Ebert: the legendary film critic lost his ability to speak due to cancer. He used a customized synthesized voice on his laptop to communicate and to give interviews.

Are you curious what is involved in having me present at your event?