About Tim – Professional

This page is largely documenting my historical work, and therefore isn’t always kept up-to-date.

View a reverse chronology, limited to Tim’s long-term voice-related experience and contributions.

For a list of some more recent clients and projects not referenced here, see Accessibility, Voice, IVR and Branding Consulting Case Studies

Tim’s Conference Speaking Experience

“Inspiring, insightful, entertaining and charming…” Tim Noonan breathes life and joy into his conference keynotes and after-dinner presentations. He will take you on an enchanting journey of rediscovery into the power and mystery inherent in your own voice, and the voices around you. Every single voice tells its own unique and elaborate story, if only you know how to listen for it.

Tim Noonan is the creator of the Vocal Consciousness approach – principles and strategies which promote vocal understanding; foster expressive speaking and nurture insightful listening. Vocal Consciousness arose from Tim’s lifelong study of the human voice. As a person blind from birth, Tim has learnt to listen for countless vocal cues that reveal so much more than the casual listener, and even the speaker, are aware of; and once enlightened, your way of speaking and listening can change forever.

An innovator in voice-based communication, Tim coaches individuals, speakers and voice artists in presentation skills and runs workshops for contact centres on authentic speaking and insightful listening. He also consults to business owners and organisations to assist them develop natural and memorable vocal brands.

Tim also delivers an inspirational keynote titled ‘Seeing Things Differently’ and a technology access keynote titled ‘Creating Elegant and Accessible Websites’.

Tim has delivered presentations to organizations including Westpac, St.George, ING Bank, Webber Shandwick , The Australian Bankers’ Association, Optus, Telstra, The Australian Electoral Commission, the National Speakers Associations of Australia and New Zealand, Naked Communications, The Advertising Federation of Australia, Vision Australia and The Australian Tax Office.

Education and training

Tim has a degree in Cognitive Psychology and Education, with a particular focus on how people process and comprehend spoken information. Over the last 20 years he has blended his interests in information, technology and speech, to bring printed and online information to life for people who are blind or print disabled, by transforming it into spoken word audio.

Tim also works as an auditory user interface consultant, designing and enhancing automated telephone services and directing voice-over artists in the studio.

Tim’s formal studies also include a Diploma of Remedial Massage Therapy, a Certificate in Relaxation Hypnosis and studies in energetic and spiritual healing.

A widely acknowledged leader in two very distinct professional domains, for two and a half decades, Tim has worked both as a disability technologist, and as an auditory human factors specialist/designer. This has involved researching, designing, advocating and informing people about voice-based communication, software, technology, human factors, disability topics and societal attitudes to disability.

Publications

Tim is a contributing author for three books, has been published in peer-reviewed international journals, as well as authoring and publishing a wide range of commissioned reports and white papers in the fields of voice, technology and disability.

A gifted communicator, educator and mediator, Tim is committed to maximising the clarity, sincerity and effectiveness of all communication, whether through his professional speaking presentations and workshops, his radio and TV appearances as a knowledge expert, or in his work designing technology in ways that make it more natural and intuitive for people to learn, use and understand.

Tim Noonan Consulting

Tim Noonan runs Tim Noonan Consulting (TNC). He has been consulting to industry, government, NGOs and educational institutions since 1995 when he established SoftSpeak Computer Services.

Tim worked for Vision Australia (formerly Royal Blind Society) for 16 years, focusing on making information and technology accessible to people with disabilities.

He has been a member of two Standards Australia committees as well as having been involved with the Web Accessibility Initiative of W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium). He has been a director on the Board of 2RPH (Radio for the Print Handicapped) NSW, and was a past board member of St. Edmund’s School for Blind Children.

Since 1993, Tim represented ATUG (Australian Telecommunication Users’ Group) on the Standards Australia “Interactive Voice Response User Interface Requirements” Committee. He was also the convener for two years of the Round Table on Information Access for People with Print Disabilities Sub-Committee on “Electronic Information Access”, which produced guidelines for preparation of ASCII documents for blind computer users (developing a guideline similar to the Markdown format). He also represented Australia on the International Committee for Accessible Document Design (ICADD).

Tim was commissioned in 2007 by the Human Rights Commission to research and author a report titled ‘The Overlooked Consumers’ on the access issues for people with disabilities and older people, frequently presented by consumer electronics and home appliances.

In 2007 Tim was contracted by the Australian Electoral Commission as their Usability Expert, to assist in the development of talking voting machines which allowed people who are blind or vision impaired to cast a secret and independent vote in the 2007 Federal Election. Tim designed the input strategy, refined voting machine scripts, advised on the voice talents to be used, and directed the voice talent in-studio to announce the prompts and read out candidates names in a consistent manner.

In 2006-07 Tim was engaged as an accessibility consultant by the Australian Bankers’ Association to draft guidelines and advise on strategies to ensure that people with disabilities are not excluded by adoption of authentication technologies being deployed in the banking industry.

In 2006 Tim gave information and advice to the Canadian Bell Alient telco in relation to better integration of their several automated telephone services.

Tim was contracted to Griffith and NSW Universities as part of the “Smart Internet” Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) to specify user needs and features for the development of a prototype portable speech input/speech output mobile phone/PDA device for blind users and others in eyes-busy situations. He was also engaged to specify and refine the speech recognition and speech synthesis user interfaces for the device. (2003-04).

Tim was engaged as an electronic banking accessibility specialist by the Australian Bankers’ Association, to draft and develop four industry standards on the accessibility of ATMs, EFTPOS, Internet Banking and Telephone Banking. (2001-02), and has consulted for the Reserve Bank of Australia on the feasibility of developing an electronic polymer bank note identifier for blind Australians. (1996)

Tim was also contracted to undertake a major project for Blind Citizens Australia on E-Commerce and smart-card technologies focusing on improving accessibility of electronic banking and online shopping services for people with disabilities (1999-2000). He also researched and wrote a report for Blind Citizens Australia on the development of a braille-based text telephone for people who are deaf and blind. (1997)

Tim consulted to St.George Bank on IVR/ACD applications (including extensive scripting), voice-coaching Julie Anthony in voiceover announcing, and system usability evaluation.

Some of the key contributions Tim has made over the last 20 years to improve information access for blind and vision impaired Australians include:

Design and implementation for Vision Australia of three world-class fully-automated telephone-based information services:

Today’s News Now

A fully automated service that uses synthetic speech to provide interactive telephone access to the full text of several daily Fairfax and News Ltd newspapers. (The TNN newspaper service was recognised by the Library Board of Victoria, and the Victorian Public Library Network as an example of best practice in the provision of library services). Details can be found in: Libraries Building Communities; Report Four: Showcasing the Best, State Library of Victoria, 2005.)

JobPhone

A fully automated service utilising synthetic speech and web-scraping to provide callers with keyword searching and full access to job listings from the mycareer.com.au website;

LibTel

A fully automated IVR library catalogue searching and browsing service providing live searches by author, title and subject interest area. It allows callers to hear book details and order books to be sent to them in the post.

Key features of these services include:

• Natural speaking of phone numbers, dates/times, abbreviations, place names and proper names;
• Ability to navigate and review spoken information by paragraph, sentence or word;
• Ability to spell words and proper names;
• Use of voice fonts to indicate context and facilitate navigation;
• Context-sensitive help system; and
• Automatic compliance with the Australian and New Zealand IVR user interface standard (AS/NZS4263).

These services are described and demonstrated in Tim’s 2018 presentation at UX Australia

Planned and implemented the full in-house computerisation of Royal Blind Society’s braille transcription operations, and trained all staff in the new environment;

In 1993-4 Tim worked with external software developers to develop voice output user interfaces for custom Unix and PC-based business applications. This is documented in: Development of an Accessible Speech User Interface for People who are Blind or Vision impaired. (1994) Royal Blind Society