I built the voice I once struggled to find.

As a young child, I struggled to produce speech clearly. I was eventually diagnosed with childhood apraxia of speech, a motor speech disorder that affects the brain’s ability to plan and coordinate the movements needed for speaking. I also had an extended lingual frenulum, which was surgically corrected when I was young. Even then, speaking did not suddenly become easy.

I didn’t begin speaking until around the age of five, and my education started about a year later than it otherwise might have. While other children seemed to pick up words naturally, I had to work towards something that many people never have to think about: making myself understood.

One memory has stayed with me.

When I was around four, I attended an interview for school. I was asked a simple question about Tom and Jerry. I knew what I wanted to say, but getting the words out clearly was another matter. I struggled to pronounce cat, producing something closer to tat.

It was a small word, but it became part of a much bigger story. I was denied admission, and my family was told that I might never be able to attend a regular school.

I was too young to understand everything that was happening. I could not have explained what apraxia was, why my mouth didn’t always cooperate with what I wanted to say, or why something as ordinary as a conversation could feel so difficult. But I would eventually understand the weight of being judged by something you cannot easily control.

Learning to speak, learning to be heard

Speech therapy became part of my childhood. Progress required time, practice, and patience. Speaking was not simply a matter of knowing a word; it was about learning how to produce its sounds.

Even today, a few sounds remain difficult for me, particularly certain consonants such as /k/. One of the most frustrating parts is that I cannot always hear my own pronunciation errors. I may know exactly what I want to say and believe I have said it correctly, only to discover that someone else heard something different.

That experience has shaped how I think about communication.

A speech difficulty is not a measure of intelligence, ambition, or understanding.

Sometimes, the thought is already there. The words are there, too. What gets in the way is the ability to communicate them as intended.

And yet, communication is how we participate in classrooms, make friends, express ourselves, and become part of the world around us. When speaking becomes difficult, the effects can extend far beyond pronunciation.

I know this because I have lived it.

From a personal struggle to Awaaz

For a long time, my experience with speech was simply a part of my life. Eventually, it became something I wanted to understand more deeply.

I began thinking about how artificial intelligence could help make speech assessment and practice more accessible, particularly for people who speak languages that receive less attention in speech technology.

Urdu was an especially meaningful place to begin.

Millions of people speak Urdu, yet access to appropriate speech support can be limited by geography, cost, availability of specialists, and the resources available in a person’s language. Technology has enormous potential to help bridge some of these gaps, but only if it is built around the people who need it.

That is where Awaaz began.

Awaaz is an AI-powered Urdu speech therapy platform designed to help people assess their speech, understand the sounds they struggle with, and practise through personalized exercises. Its assessment experience uses spoken responses to generate insights and guide users towards targeted practice, including sound contrasts and articulation cues.

The goal is not to replace speech-language therapists. It is to make assessment and guided practice more accessible, while creating opportunities for technology and professional expertise to work together.

Building Awaaz has meant bringing together my lived experience, my interest in computer science and artificial intelligence, and a problem I understand personally. It has also meant recognizing that no two people experience speech difficulties in exactly the same way. A useful tool must do more than identify an error; it must help someone understand what to work on next.

Why this matters to me

I did not build Awaaz because I have completely overcome every difficulty with speech. I built it because I understand what it means to keep working on something that other people take for granted.

I know what it feels like to have a thought that is clear in your mind but difficult to express. I know the frustration of not being able to hear an error that someone else can hear immediately. And I know that a person’s potential can be misunderstood when the way they communicate becomes the first thing others notice.

I want Awaaz to help change that experience for others.

• I want a child struggling with a sound to have somewhere to begin.
• I want families to have better tools for understanding speech difficulties.
• I want therapists to have technology that supports their work.
• And I want Urdu speakers to have access to speech technology that takes their language seriously.

There is still much to learn, improve, and build. Awaaz is not the end of my own speech journey, nor is it a solution to every barrier people face. It is a step towards making support more accessible to people who deserve to be heard.

A voice is more than the sounds it makes.

For me, Awaaz is personal. It connects the child who struggled to pronounce a simple word with the person now building technology to help others communicate.

My experience taught me that being able to speak and being able to make yourself understood are not always the same thing. It also taught me that difficulty communicating should never be mistaken for a lack of ideas, ability, or potential.

I cannot go back and change the experiences that shaped my childhood. But I can use what I learned from them to build something that might make another child’s journey a little easier.

That is the purpose behind Awaaz.