Fonetti was born out of the determination, desire and love of a parent to teach her dyslexic children to read. As adults, those children are accomplished but still find the idea of reading aloud terrifying.

 

That parent is me, and those children are mine. Nobody should find reading aloud terrifying.

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A few years ago, I watched in wonder as my two year old grandson, who couldn’t at the time string a sentence together, used my iPhone with complete ease. This got me thinking about creating a tablet based reading platform combining gaming with education to help children with their reading in a safe, supporting and independent environment.

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A conversation with my co-inventor, Bill Bungay where the creativity and innovation flowed. Our aligned vision and our combined investment and resources transformed the dream into a reality.

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Our biggest shock came early on when we discovered the specialist voice tech required to support reading simply didn’t exist. Not deterred, we built it ourselves!

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A ‘can do’ attitude has always served me well, so I partnered with some best in class speech engineers and that search led me to the world renowned School of informatics at the University of Edinburgh and top speech recognition expert Dr Peter Bell. He is now part of my ‘can do’ team, who nurture, support and embrace excellence every single day.

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 ‘Can do’ combined with world class expertise and excellence has led to tech that is now validated, robust and thoroughly tested. 

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Ultimately, as a parent, and now grandparent, the magic happens when I see a child using Fonetti to read out loud, not with terror, but total confidence – at that moment a lifelong skill has been instilled.

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Kim Antoniou

Auris Founder /CEO