Afluentia: communication support for fluent aphasia

• Autor(a) principal: Azevedo, Cátia Isabel Soares
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/36828
• topic: Aphasia; Technology-mediated communication; User-centred design; Augmentative and alternative communication; APP; Speech and language therapist; Human computer interaction expert

Aphasia is a language disorder caused by brain damage (eg, stroke) that affects a person’s ability to communicate. Involves different degrees of impairment and it can manifest by difficulties in speaking fluently or difficulty finding words (anomia), but can also entail impairment in spoken language comprehension, inability to repeat words or phrases, impairments in written expression (agraphia), in reading comprehension (alexia) or a combination of any of these difficulties. It can thus result in limitations in the way the person with aphasia interacts with others, for instance, to express how they are feeling as well as their needs, making it hard for them to have a more independent life or have their difficulties addressed. Additionally, this condition also has a strong impact in the life of those around them (e.g., family, carers) as the difficulties of communication, should anything happen, can lead to fear of leaving these patients unattended. Several challenges arise when addressing the communication needs of people with aphasia deriving from the diverse and idiosyncratic nature of their condition and although assisted communication tools have been proposed in the literature (e.g. using pictograms), the characteristics of aphasia often render them as partial solutions. In this sense, this project focuses on understanding the characteristics and needs of aphasic patients and also on the proposal of technology-mediated communication tools that address them in their daily lives. This work adopts a user-centered design and development approach to explore how people with aphasia can be supported in their day-today communication resorting to technology mediation. It was thus achieving an iterative design with the development and evaluation of a proof-of-concept solution for communication aspects, which was progressively implemented and refined having in consideration the identified requirements and the continuous evaluation of the proposed solutions, carried out with a focus group composed by a Speech and Language Therapist (SLT) and a Human Computer Interaction (HCI) Expert. After a first version of the system was achieved, an evaluation phase with Speech and Language Therapists with a strong experience with patients with aphasia took place in order to understand and validate the achieved application, which led to more refinement phases. At its current stage of development, evaluation results show a good level of usability and satisfaction and establish Afluentia as promising ground for further evolving the research on communication mediated by technology to support people with aphasia.