From Silence to Self-Expression: How AI Is Transforming Communication

What does My Voice AI do?

MyVoice AI is a hardware-agnostic Clinical Decision Support SaaS platform empowering non-verbal individuals, particularly on the autism spectrum. By pairing AI-driven dynamic communication tools—such as adaptive symbol boards, personalized typing, and natural custom voices—with therapist-in-the-loop dashboards, MyVoice AI turns standard tablets into accessible, intelligent speech devices.

The current landscape

For decades, the Assistive and Alternative Communication (AAC) industry has been monopolized by legacy hardware manufacturers (e.g., Tobii Dynavox, PRC-Saltillo) selling closed-system, proprietary devices costing between $3,000 and $15,000.

Because of these prohibitive price tags and complex bureaucratic hurdles, over 70% of non-verbal individuals worldwide are locked out of accessible speech technology. Existing standalone apps, on the other hand, rely on static, rigid symbol grids requiring endless manual taps, leading to severe cognitive fatigue and abandonment rates exceeding 30%. Furthermore, traditional tools operate as clinical "black boxes," leaving speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and educators with zero continuous data to objectively monitor, evaluate, and support their patients’ developmental milestones.

How My Voice AI started

MyVoice AI was born in 2025 at the HackAutism hackathon, where founder Tevet Hartogs and her team took 3rd place with a bold premise: communication should adapt to the human, not the other way around.

Selected for the prestigious College of Management accelerator, Tevet immersed herself in deep market validation. While researching the field, someone asked if the platform could assist children with selective mutism. Having never heard the term, Tevet researched it and experienced a profound personal breakthrough—she realized that she had lived with undiagnosed selective mutism as a child.

Remembering the agonizing isolation of having thoughts, feelings, and intellect trapped behind silence, Tevet realized that the tool she was building was the exact lifeline her younger self had needed. This personal realization ignited the mission behind MyVoice AI: to build an accessible, intelligent SaaS platform designed with the community, ensuring every non-verbal child and adult has an authentic voice.

The My Voice AI solution

MyVoice AI is a B2B2C SaaS platform that eliminates the need for expensive proprietary hardware by operating seamlessly on any consumer smartphone or tablet. Its adaptive, context-aware communication boards learn from each user’s cognitive capacity, interests, and real-time environment to reduce cognitive load and create a more personalized communication experience. The platform also offers expressive typing with smart predictive text correction and personalized, age-appropriate voice synthesis, giving users a voice and identity they can truly call their own. For clinicians, MyVoice AI provides a bidirectional Clinical Decision Support (CDS) dashboard that transforms daily communication data into actionable, visual therapy metrics for speech-language pathologists and special education teachers. The company is currently conducting an active pilot with Harim ASD School, serving 48 non-verbal students, while also initiating an early-stage pilot with the Elor Organization across more than 40 care centers. MyVoice AI is also in advanced discussions with Clalit Health Services, Israel’s largest HMO, to co-develop its therapist clinical dashboard. The company is backed by Google Cloud for Startups, HackAutism, Startup for Startup, LeumiTech, EY, and MusicTech. Its broader vision is to democratize speech technology across global healthcare and education systems, with the goal of reducing the cost of assisted communication by 95% while demonstrating measurable clinical outcomes.

our mission is to ensure that no one is left behind in silence simply because they cannot afford a $10,000 piece of hardware, or because existing tools fail to capture who they truly are. We are giving millions of people their rightful voice back." — Tevet Hartogs, Founder & CEO, MyVoice AI

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— Tevet Hartog Founder and CEO of My Voice AI

A My Voice AI customer story

During an early user trial, Tevet met with Masha and her non-verbal autistic teenage daughter, Toma. For the first time, Toma was introduced to MyVoice AI’s expressive typing interface and personalized voice tool.

Through the screen, Toma began sharing thoughts she had never been able to articulate with legacy symbol grids. She expressed clearly that she is smart, that she understands everything happening around her, and that she desperately wants people to hear her real voice—a voice that sounds like a young girl her age, representing who she truly is rather than a robotic default tone.

Toma’s feedback established one of MyVoice AI's core engineering tenets: communication is not just about requesting basic needs; it is about self-identity and dignity. Designing natural, expressive voices directly with non-verbal individuals has remained central to the company’s product roadmap ever since.

The team culture at My Voice AI

MyVoice AI operates under an unshakeable philosophy: “Nothing about us without us.” The team believes that truly accessible technology must be built through firsthand lived experience, deep domain expertise, and empathy for the people it serves. Tevet Hartogs, Founder & CEO, leads the company’s strategic partnerships, commercialization, and product vision, informed by her personal childhood experience with selective mutism. Ornit Avivi Edan, ASD School Manager & Advisor, is the former principal of Harim ASD School and an authority on typed expression, overseeing educational deployment and student integration. Sharon Shaish, Clinical Product Lead, is a certified Speech-Language Pathologist shaping the clinical architecture for users from early childhood through adulthood. Yaniv Hozez, AI & Cybersecurity Researcher, an OLYMPIQ Society member with an IQ of 190, leads the development of context-caching models and low-latency speech pipelines. Sahar Chalfon, QA Lead & Backend Developer, brings technical rigor alongside years of hands-on volunteering with non-verbal autistic youth. Maayan Eran Moshe, Family & Psychodynamic Advisor, is a child psychotherapist and mother of an autistic child, advising on parental support and emotional engagement. Tzipora Ittah, Full-Stack Developer, leads the development of intuitive UI/UX for dynamic AAC communication boards, while Snir Nagar, IT & InfoSec Consultant, oversees medical data privacy and security compliance. Together, the multidisciplinary team combines lived experience, clinical expertise, education, technology, and family perspectives to ensure MyVoice AI is built with—and not simply for—the people it aims to serve.