Getting Started with pVoice

pVoice is a communications application for severely disabled people. Keep this in mind while you work with pVoice. Often things work different than you expect, but most of the things that are "different" are designed to make it easier for the people who are supposed to work with it.

The idea

The basic idea behind pVoice is that someone who can't speak, uses pVoice to create phrases. To create phrases, someone else must have filled the pVoice database with data: the vocabulary.
Therefore pVoice has two modes of operation: user mode and edit mode. In user mode the user is able to select symbols and/or letters on the screen, thereby forming phrases, and let them be pronounced using an installed speech synthesizer.
In edit mode, someone capable of using a mouse and a keyboard can make additions and modifications to the vocabulary.

Vocabularies can be organized into hierarchical themes. For example, you could have a theme called "Animals", in which of course you could put all possible animals, but you could also use a more structured approach and make several subthemes in the "Animals" theme, like "Mammals", "Birds", "Pets", etcetera. This is for the vocabulary editor to decide.

Symbol languages

All around the world numerous organizations developed an equal number of symbol languages. Symbol languages are nothing more than a set of images, where every image represents a word or a phrase. pVoice unfortunately doesn't come with any of these symbol languages, because neither of the available languages are free. The most commonly used symbol language, PCS, is available for a price of roughly € 200. The screenshots you'll see in this helpfile were made using the PCS symbolset, but you could use any symbol language you want.

Of course you are not limited to using a specific symbol language. You could download images from the internet, use digital photos you created yourself, or even create your own images. You don't even need to use images. You can also use seperate letters to create your phrases in pVoice!