I have selective mutism, so I spend part of my life mute. Until recently, it only affected me some days and was not a problem. Recently it became prolonged and stronger, causing me to not be able to talk at all with people. This causes all kinds of interesting problems at work, ranging from the inability to say 'hi' to co-workers, to how I'll attend a meeting and provide input.

Text To Speech software to the rescue! Turns out, this is a lot harder than you would expect. While my co-workers are accepting, they often forget. It also turns out that conversations have a lot of complicated rules that you wouldn't be aware of. Although that doesn't matter if the software for the meeting doesn't provide accessibility.

I'm a transgender woman and thus I have two names. My deadname (legal name) I use for official documents, like my contract with my employer. My real name is what I use in daily life. I was the first person to pose this problem to my employer and they acted quick to stitch everything up to display the right name.

This talk discusses when the stitches broke and my deadname leaked out and the anxiety this caused. The fallout of that incident, I notice to this day.