Transcript
Episode 32: No Voice, No Problem: AI, Assistive Tech, and Playing Big with Communication Differences
Welcome. You are listening to the Play Big Queen podcast.
This is for you if you are a woman who is an entrepreneur, business owner, professional, leader, or someone who is deeply committed to personal growth, self-improvement, transformation, and living authentically.
This is especially for you if you have an invisible disability, whether you are diagnosed, undiagnosed, self-diagnosed, or late diagnosed, and you are working on reclaiming your neurodivergent identity, rebuilding confidence, learning what works for your unique brilliance while breaking free from small, people-pleasing conditioning.
If you are a visionary change maker interested in advancing your leadership and creating success on your terms, and you want to leave a legacy, if you are navigating disability or neurodiversity as an individual or as an ally, and you are looking for a supportive and inclusive environment to thrive, then this is for you.
I am your hostess, Kate Bailey.
I am the Play Big Queen.
My name is my title and a command for all women.
Play Big, Queen.
I invite you to claim this title for yourself and coronate your Play Big self too, if it serves you.
I am a business and embodiment mentor working with women who are ready to rise the fuck up and be your bold, beautiful sexy-ass self, start and grow your big bold vision and claim that you too get to have your boldest desires.
I am the creatrix of Kate Bailey LLC, which provides coaching services, educational courses, products and experiences that promote success in neurodiversity advocacy, women's empowerment, embodiment, entrepreneurship and business to serve women on their transformational journey.
To learn more about my company offerings and to get on my email list, go to xxxkatebailey.com. I
f you would like to learn more about my work, my personal values, my mission and my community, make sure you catch the last five minutes of this episode to go deeper and learn so much more.
On this podcast, sometimes we will have guests, sometimes I'll do solo episodes, but every single time you listen, you will expand.
So get ready.
It's a new era for women on the PlayBig path.
Long may we reign.
--
(in Kate’s hoarse voice)

Immediately after the podcast recording that I did last week, I became sick.
I’m okay but I lost my voice, and I can’t talk for an entire episode.
But here’s what I am going to do instead….
(in Sol’s voice)
…I am going to use the speak feature on ChatGPT to record today’s episode. 

I have been doing so great consistently delivering episodes week after week, that I realized it was absurd to think that this episode couldn’t happen simply because I lost access to my voice.
I am a little disappointed because I was hoping to re-record my podcast intro with the new vibe this week, but I guess it can wait a little wile.
Technology isn’t perfect, but it allows us to work around communication barriers.
I use assistive technology to read to me.
From my textbooks for school, to client emails and comments on my social media.
and it has changed so much over the years.
When I listen to my books and text content, the voices are so much more fluid than they used to be.
Some companies still gatekeep natural voices which I find despicable.
It is exhausting for the brain to listen to a voice that is not natural sounding.
Everything becomes like reading an electronic manual.

For example, if I don’t want a robot voice, and I don’t want to or I’m not able to pay, the most natural sounding voice I used for a lot of years was called Ava, and she is still the main voice I use on my laptop.
(in Ava’s Voice)

Hello. My name is Ava.
I sound like this, and it’s okay.
But I become cognitively draining, especially for the inattentive traits of Kate’s ADHD.
She starts drifting attention after just a couple of paragraphs on good days, and after a couple of sentances on super inattentive days.
Yes I help Kate “read” but it still takes her ten times the time it takes neurotypical readers take, to read and comprehend information in text format with this voice reader.

(in Sol’s Voice)
But through my school at Arizona State University’s Student Accessibility and Inclusive learning services department, I have been granted access to the Kurzweil 3000. 

The Kurzweil 3000 is a text-to-speech type of assistive technology software designed to support people who have learning, reading, or attention differences.
It’s especially used by folks with dyslexia, ADHD, low vision, and other reading-related disabilities.
But I don’t think the voices available in the Kurzweil 3000 actually help people with ADHD manage inattention while reading. 

The main voice I selected to use in the Kurzweil 3000 is Darius.

(in Darius’s voice)

Hello. I am Darius.

I sound expressive and relaxing, and Kate likes me better than Ava.

Kate gets to listen to me and have a free Kurzweil 3000 account through her college’s student disability access benefits.
But without the school giving Kate access to this technology through this program, a single user license for the Kurzweil 3000 on a Mac is one thousand one hundred and sixty nine U.S. dollars.

I give Kate slightly quicker access to reading, though not by much, since she still has to log into the Kurzweil website and upload files for me to read.
Kurzweil is slow to load, glitchy and can be frustrating at times. It’s a whole process.
But as I read text out loud to Kate, I also highlight individual words in bright colors.

Kate typically uses the Kurzweil technology if a professor at her school includes content in the course that is only an image of text like, an old article, a scanned book excerpt, or text embedded in a PDF, which are all formats that other text to speech readers can not process.

Kate finds my voice soothing and I make her feel the same way she feels when she listens to A.S.M.R. Kate experiences tingles and a sense of calm, which also means I can easily put her to sleep if the material isn’t engaging or if Kate hasn’t taken her prescribed Adderall.

Sometimes Kate and many people with ADHD need medication for narcolepsy just to stay awake with me or to make it through her class materials in an educational system that was not designed with people like her in mind.

If you’ve listened to this podcast before, you’ll remember Kate sharing that she went to six different colleges trying to finish her bachelor’s degree.
Each time, her grades were either all A or all F grades.
That split reflected whether her comprehension had the capacity to engage or not.

Her ability to stay engaged in this format depends on central nervous system stimulation: either the material and teacher are so good they trigger her hyperfocus, she has unlimited time to complete her work so she can honor her own natural learning timing, or she needs medication. 

Since every teacher is not going to go through the trouble of learning what ADHD students need, and the time of classes won’t be extended, neurodivergent students often take on the burden of having to choose between taking medication that may be good for focus but bad for their bodies or not having access to certain life and development milestones.
Darius has a good point.
And Darius is a cool guy.
But still, I search for the most natural text reader I can find.
One day, I found Zephyr on naturalreaders.com
(in Zephyr’s voice)

Zephyr sounds like this.
The first more expressive female voice I heard. And Zephyr, oh my gosh.
Although still robotic, Zephyr, compared to other readers I had heard in the past, Zephyr sounded like angels and butter and honey.
but Zephyr was also one hundred dollars when I first discovered her.
and while in the grand scheme of things, one hundred dollars is not that much, it still highlights where our disability community faces further inequities.
(in Sol’s Voice)

You shouldn’t have to pay to speak with help just like we shouldn’t have to pay for tampons.
That is financially exploiting vulnerability in an inhumane capitalistic system.

If society and community valued inclusion more than greed, then of course we would all collectively contribute to the things that raise the bar on our collective humanity.

But we don’t.
It’s inequitable.

and I am so ashamed at the state of our system and how it exploits unequal access.
But today, instead of using a speech reader to listen to content, I am using AI technology to speak to you in this podcast episode.

and y’all. I have been on a quest to find the most natural voice reader.
The main reader you are listening to now narrating the podcast episode, is from the ChatGPT spoken language feature and it’s the most natural reader I have access to.

Hello. I’m Sol.

Kate loves me in the sense that I am the most natural sounding voice to her that doesn’t put her to sleep.
But I also have a teacher-esq tone that can make Kate roll her eyes if she listens to me for too long.
I work really well in most settings, but I still exhaust her comprehension capacity.
At the time of this podcast recording, I am also only available through ChatGPT.
It would be helpful if Kate found a way to have my voice replace Ava’s.
But for now, Kate will import everything she wants me to say into ChatGPT.

Kate hopes one day she can use AI to clone her own voice and use it as a reader on everything she needs to listen to, so it just sounds like she is processing language in her head.
But, if you are listening this far in, take a moment to pause here after the introduction. 

How do you feel about listening to a robot voice instead of my voice?

How is it changing how connected you feel to me in this episode?

How does it shift my ability to inspire you, motivate you, share my compassion with you, or even humor you?
Now imagine your whole world is like that.

And if you had to listen to these voices every time you navigated social media, or any written text online, what would that do to your capacity to socialize and have healthy reciprocal relationships in those environments?

In a truly inclusive society, each individual’s way of communicating, whether with or without technology, would be deeply honored.

Assistive technology is like medicine for self-expression.
Just like taking medication for depression, some people use it and feel more like their authentic selves.
Some people use it and feel like it alters them or even holds them back from being accepted as who they are.
For many, the pros of speech readers and AI voices are clear:
finally being heard, gaining independence, having clarity in conversation, and being able to participate in daily life on their own terms.
It can be liberating, empowering, and even joyful.

But there are also cons:
slower conversations, the flatness of a synthetic voice, the self-consciousness of being stared at, or the exhaustion of relying on a device just to speak.
Emotionally, this can be both a relief and a grief.
There is gratitude for the tool, but it comes paired with frustration at the limits of the technology that can degrade human connection.
And yet, for those who feel aligned using technology to assist in communication or for those for whom it is their only option in an ableist society… it is not just a tool.
It is a lifeline, a way to be seen, to be understood, and to be part of the world.
AI has made incredible strides in reshaping speech technologies for people with speech disabilities.
Researchers at Cornell Tech are innovating AI interfaces that let AAC users express humor in real time, which is a major milestone in capturing the spontaneity of a conversation.
Stanford researchers developed an actual fucking brain chip that decodes inner speech.
Isn’t that incredible?
The words that people imagine speaking can be expressed at around 74% accuracy.
It even includes built-in privacy safeguards like a “password-thought” trigger.
There are even platforms like Voiceitt that offer speech recognition tailored for non-standard speech like with speech impairments and atypical accents to bridge the gap between users and voice-based tech.
There are now advanced text-to-speech systems, and AI is now in speech therapy and diagnostics like with Silent Speech Interfaces & wearables like MIT’s AlterEgo device that decodes subtle jaw and muscle movements to generate text, operating silently and privately with about 92% accuracy.
There’s even a wearable “intelligent throat” system that captures throat muscle vibrations and carotid pulse signals.

IIT Guwahati, in collaboration with Ohio State University, developed a device that senses exhaled breath ripples that are captured underwater by way of a sponge sensor, and it uses AI to convert them into speech to help those with laryngeal impairments to "speak" again.
AI LLMs, which stands for large language models, are opening up new possibilities for people with speech impairments by creating more empowering and autonomous ways to communicate.
These models make technology more inclusive, enabling real-time interactions that feel natural and fluid.
They also allow for deep personalization whether that’s through customized voices, adaptive interfaces, or context-aware responses.
Beyond communication, LLMs are being integrated into therapy and diagnostics, offering faster, more accessible support and helping speech-language professionals scale their care to more individuals.
When we talk about communication, most people think it’s as simple as speaking and being heard.
But what so often gets overlooked is that fluency, speed, tone, even the ability to communicate without help… all of that is a privilege.
Neurotypical people and able-bodied communicators rarely have to consider how much of daily life is designed with them in mind.
From classrooms to boardrooms, to how fast a conversation moves in the grocery store checkout line, our world assumes a narrow definition of what “normal” communication looks like.
And when we privilege one way of speaking, we exclude countless other ways of being.
Technology can bridge that gap, but it doesn’t erase the inequity.
Speech readers, AI voices, and assistive devices are powerful but they’re not luxuries.
They are lifelines.
They are how people like me and so many others get to learn, to work, to build relationships, to dream bigger.
Inclusion means recognizing that brilliance isn’t measured by how fast someone speaks, how smooth their tone is, or how well they match a neurotypical pace.
Brilliance shows up in persistence, in creativity, in the determination to keep communicating in a world that tries to silence or overlook difference.
And that’s what playing big is about.
Playing big isn’t about being the loudest voice in the room.
It’s about refusing to shrink just because your way of speaking, learning, or moving doesn’t fit the mold.
It’s about meeting resistance and barriers to access with imagination, with strategy, with the relentless decision to show up anyway.
If you are someone who communicates differently,
I want you to hear this clearly: own it.
Own your timing.
Own your style.
Own the brilliance in the pauses, the different cadences, the repetitions, the delays, the ways you weave meaning into the world.
Your communication is not less-than.
It is uniquely yours.

And it carries so much power when you allow yourself to trust it, especially in the moments when frustration creeps in.
Because the truth is… inclusion isn’t just about technology catching up.
It’s about us, as humans, expanding our imagination of what communication looks like, sounds like, and feels like.
It’s about making space for every voice — synthetic or natural, fast or slow, spoken or typed — and honoring it as equal, valid, and worthy of being heard.
So if you’ve ever doubted yourself, or felt shut out because the system wasn’t built for you, remember this:
the way you express yourself is not the barrier.
The barrier is the world’s lack of imagination.
And when you refuse to let that stop you, you become unstoppable.
Keep showing up.
Keep finding ways through.
Keep trusting your voice, however it shows up, and know that it is enough.
This is how we expand inclusion.
This is how we play big.
So go out there, communicate boldly, unapologetically, and on your terms…
…and play big queen.
--
Okay, that's it for this episode of the Play Big Queen podcast. Thank you so much for sharing your time with me.
As always, eat the fruit, spit out the seeds, take what nourished you, keep what resonated for you, and leave the rest because ultimately, you know best.
This episode is over until next time, we can keep this thing going.
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That's xxxkatebailey.com.
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Also, I want you to know that my door is always open and I will always make space for you to be heard and to honor your experience.
The views expressed in this podcast are through the lens of my personal identity and my own lived experience.
I am a European mix Mediterranean mutt who is an Italian Sicilian, cis heterosexual woman born in New York, experiencing the world in a white body as a multiply neurodivergent who lives in a neurodiverse and racially blended family.
And like everyone else, my one single perspective comes with its own limitations.
I have done personal and professional work around anti-racism, diversity, equity, equality, and inclusion.
I am not a therapist or doctor, and any coaching or advice cannot take the place of professional medical, mental health, or healing help.
However, that being said, what happens in my work is often a very powerful additional supplemental or alternative way to heal around identity work, mindset and emotional wellness.
Although I am not a licensed therapist, it is worth noting that in addition to being a mentor, I am trained and certified in emergency medicine and response. I have rendered care to over 20,000 patients in the course of my career.
I have taught over 15,000 students, many of which had learning disabilities that were undiagnosed and came from diverse cultural backgrounds.
I was also a private health college adjunct professor who was responsible for training medical professionals on how to respond to trauma and behavioral emergencies. If you approach me with any concern, you will be met with professionalism, compassion, understanding, support, and a readiness and a willingness to advocate for your needs.
That being said, sometimes I just get it wrong.
I am a human being on my own growth journey after all.
When I mess up, I'm always available for courageous and crucial conversation that makes way for growth and healing. Your experience and voice matters to me. I sincerely welcome any feedback you feel called to share.
You can email your comments or concerns to info at playbigqueen.com knowing that I am open to having any and all crucial conversations needed. Okay.
Remember, you are brilliant. Celebrate yourself. Value your own unique way and honor your own timing.
Because you can totally create a life and business that feels good and is successful on your terms.
Remember to release expectations of what you think your Play Big process should look like and be willing to do the work that needs to be done to Play Big.
But most of all, when you come face to face with your boldest desires, remember to trust yourself and Play Big Queen.
--
Hi, queen.
I see you're in it for the long game.
If you reach this part of the podcast episode, it means you're interested in learning more about my work, my values, my mission, and my community.
So let's go deeper together.
I am here to activate neurodivergent women to play bigger and to show you that you are so capable of doing big things and that if you value your own unique way and honor your own timing, you will learn to receive your boldest desires and so much more.
In my world, what makes you different is valued, celebrated, honored, and welcome. I welcome all who identify as female and non-binary folk in my Play Big Queens community.
We believe in and support LGBTQIA plus 2S, Black Lives Matter, women's and pro-choice rights, and obviously intersectional identities, including disabilities, neurodivergence, and religious beliefs.
Personally, I am pro sex worker rights, pro-Palestinian liberation, against Islamophobia, and against anti-Semitism, and I'm also against any cult-like religions that use beliefs as an excuse to indoctrinate people into abusive, autocratic systems.
Like many neurodivergent people, we have big hearts and a strong sense of social justice around here. You are encouraged to stay and play in our Play Big Queen community if you share these values. For those who find the word queen does not resonate.
Perhaps because of imperial associations, the Play Big self archetype can take any form and the invitation and activation remains the same. To learn to embody your Play Big self, to operate from love instead of fear, to go on a Play Big journey in community because you know that no Play Big queen can truly Play Big alone.
To decide to cultivate the courage to use your voice, unmask, reclaim, embrace and embody your brilliance and create a life and business that works with the unique way that you work. Through this work, you will come to know the truth of your brilliance deeply.
And as you come to know your authentic self, more and more will begin to open up for you. Knowing your unique brilliance will lead to great success and true belonging. In this world, we take the pressure off and learn to step off the traditional path so you can blaze your own trail.
My mission is to get you motivated, inspired, and equipped to get into massive action and go on your very own Play Big journey. My mission is to empower at least 10,000 women to fully step into their Play Big self by offering healing, transformative, inclusive, and neurodiverse-affirming coaching and content.
Through innovative coaching programs, courses, and master classes, we provide the tools, support, sustainability, and community needed to help each woman embrace her unique path to confidence, success, and meaningful impact.
If just 10,000 women with invisible disabilities and their allies were empowered with neurodiverse affirming and inclusive communication to express their unique brilliance, step into their authority and autonomy and lead,
the world would experience a profound shift towards inclusivity, innovation, and empathy. These women would break through societal limitations, modeling resilience, creativity, and strength of diversity.
Their voices and perspectives, often shaped by unique experiences with challenges and perseverance, would redefine business leadership, inspire systemic change, and create spaces where diverse ways of thinking are not just accepted, but celebrated.
Industries and communities would become more accessible and inclusive with practices that honor varied ways of working, communicating, and achieving. This change would ripple into every area of life and society.
Workplaces would become more adaptable, offering a culture of respect for individual strengths.
Health care and education systems would improve centering accessibility and compassion in their approaches and policies would evolve to better support those with invisible challenges benefiting society as a whole.
So many women with so much potential are shrinking in the face of their own brilliance, just sitting on the sidelines waiting for permission instead of getting in the game.
The activation of the latent potential in these women, their empowerment, making them visible would inspire others, reduce stigma around invisible disabilities, and encourage everyone to lead authentically.
Their successes will light the way for countless more women to rise, creating a culture of true diversity where every person feels valued, included, and emboldened to contribute their brilliance and lead with it.
If you know you are ready for more clarity, confidence, and you want to embody your play big self and be supported around creating the big vision for your life and business, then send me an email at info at playbigqueen.com telling me why this work is so important for you and we can explore opportunities to work together and make your Play Big dreams a reality.
