Major breakthrough in filling gap for language impairment issues

A team of King’s Informatics researchers has created a set of prototype tools to help populations with communication difficulties speak up. In a first-of-its-kind study, the team produced wearable augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) prototypes in collaboration with focus groups of complex communication needs (CCNs) sufferers, with the potential to be utilized alongside established therapy. An AAC device is a piece of technology that enables people with speech or language disorders to communicate. These deficits can result in difficulties speaking, reading, and writing for persons with CCNs and can be caused by a variety of illnesses such as dementia and aphasia—a language disability commonly induced by stroke.

The inability of persons with CCNs to communicate easily can frequently impede their capacity to form meaningful relationships, potentially leading to isolation. People who have CCNs are at a much higher risk of unemployment, limited educational opportunities, emotional suffering, and depression. While speech and language treatments are currently the primary types of treatment for those living with CCNs, large waiting lists have hindered many people’s access to care.

Traditional devices are rarely embraced and frequently abandoned, despite the fact that AAC devices can fill this gap and provide crucial communication support for persons with CCNs. These frequently enormous, unwieldy tablet-like gadgets impede essential forms of nonverbal communication such as body language and are generally stigmatized due to their high visibility, producing anxiety when confronted with social constraints.

However, the research team discovered that visible AAC devices might be useful for creating clear expectations during dialogues with users and raising awareness about people’s underlying handicap.

Humphrey Curtis from the Department of Informatics mentioned “I believe it’s crucial to offer people with aphasia and other invisible disabilities the autonomy to control the visibility of their assistive technology dependent on context and setting. Our partnership with charity Aphasia Re-Connect allowed us to co-design directly with people living with aphasia, and was vital for ensuring the AAC technologies we built empowered people to be more independent.”

The need of developing flexible high-tech AAC therapies that can adapt to individuals’ evolving communication demands was underlined by the research team through a qualitative analysis method in collaboration with focus groups of CCN sufferers.

Participants expressed a need for devices whose visibility they could control based on their unique needs, scenario, or environment. The study team was able to avoid typical difficulties regarding social shame and abandonment by employing a design concept that guaranteed these gadgets were unobtrusive and undetectable when their users wanted them to be.

Embracing an approach of working with participants rather than for them, the team might also leverage this shifting visibility to empower CCN patients to set explicit communication expectations.

Finally, the team hopes that as discreet and wearable technology become more inconspicuous, immersive, and intelligent, these’smart’ devices will be used to assist people with disabilities such as CCNs.

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