Software for Alternative Communication

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior., Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia de São Paulo - IFSP

The aim of this study is evaluate a software developed for alternative communication designed for people with speech difficulties. The software was executed by 30 volunteers using mobile devices that helped to play the scenarios simulated of communication situations.

Communication is a fundamental element that contributes to the development of the human being, promoting their coexistence in society. However, several factors, among them the Cerebral palsy (CP), can cause changes in muscle tone, causing injury in phono-articulatory which prevent or impair the speech production. This research aims to the development of a mobile application to promote the augmentative and alternative communication for people with CP, which adapt to the characteristics of motor limitations of these users. A mobile application was developed with pictographic resources and a voice synthesis engine, which can be customized according to the level of motor impairment and need for communication of the user. Were recruited 30 volunteers with CP who have speech difficulties and motor impairment. By means of a test script, these volunteers have used the mobile application and evaluated their usability using the questionnaire System Usability Scale (SUS), which contains 10 questions related to the ease of learning, efficiency, ease of memorization, occurrence of runtime errors of execution and level of user satisfaction.

All the volunteers will use the software and then answer the questionnaire. They will be familiar with the software interface, performs an initial test to learn how to use the software, run a test script and answer the questionnaire.

At this stage the purpose of the application is submitted, what its purpose and its features in a brief and clear manner.

At this stage, the volunteer will be asked to use the application by himself for a short time so that he can get acquainted and learn to use it

Then, the volunteer is instructed to use the application following a script task that will expose a simple and fast way all the application features. These tasks have easy actions to be executed, for example: The user must communicate through the application the phrase "I want to drink water," so that he will be instructed to perform the actions to select the option and then drink the water option.

After performing all the tasks the user replies to a questionnaire to evaluate the usability of the application after you use.

Questionnaire based in System Usability Scale (SUS) with 10 item questionnaire and five response options for respondents. Each response can be chosen in range: totally disagree, disagree, neither agree nor disagree, agree and totally agree.

Inclusion Criteria: Cerebral Palsy and speech disorder Exclusion Criteria: visual impairment and / or severe cognitive impairment