Cereproc, producers of The Scottish Voice, Heather were featured in Radio 4's 'Giving the Critic Back his Voice' on  August 9th. Cereproc came to worldwide attention last year when they produced a new voice for American film critic Roger Ebert. They have now produced a voice for Aberdeen-based Mike Arnott, who has Motor Neurone Disease and who wanted his children to still be able to hear his 'real' voice if he is unable to speak as his condition develops.

The programme also describes the use of the Heather voice in Scotland. CALL's Joanna Courtney describes the importance of being able to speak with a Scottish voice, like Heather, for children with communication difficulties in Scotland: "Its a lot more of a friendly and familiar sounding voice. What we've found is that a lot of younger children - even boys - would rather have the Scottish Heather voice than the American voice, and especially the very posh English voices that you can get."

Cereproc have recently been developing a male Scottish voice, which should be available in September.

The Scottish Voice has been very well received by the Scottish educational community and we know that she is being used to listen to:

• SQA digital exams;
• novels;
• digital textbooks;
• Microsoft Word documents;
• resources on Glow.

She is also used by children who can’t speak and who use voice output communication aids.

Heather needs a brother! Some boys have said that they would like to listen to digital resources spoken in a male Scottish voice, and we don’t think that Heather is acceptable for boys who use communication aids. If you were a boy, would you like your voice to sound like Heather, lovely though she is?

We are hoping to raise funds to enable CereProc to create a sibling for Heather. Please contact us if you have any comments or suggestions about where we could get the money, or about a male Scot who has a good voice that we could approach to become the (male) voice of Scottish education!