Impact of Speechifi Device on Communication Skills of Children with Hearing Impairment

Abstract

There is an increased prevalence of hearing impairment exist in recent population. This mandates a thorough hearing evaluation for every case of speech-language delay; this will help in the early diagnosis of hearing loss, allowing proper management to be instituted as early as possible. Apart from manual treatment, there is only handful of devices and mobile applications developed to assist children with hearing impairment in improving their communication skills. A general objective of the present study is to introduce an electronic device named “Speechifi” that can assist communication by persons having communication difficulties through tactile, auditory and visual modality. Another and more specific objective of the present study was to provide effectiveness of the device that is portable, battery-operated and constructed to be held in the hand of a user to improve communication skills of children with hearing impairment. In this paper the authors made an attempt to present a speech-enabled device named Speechifi. This device is found to be useful in the improving speech and communication skills of children with hearing impairment who participated in the present study. Speechifi enables rapid development of usable speech which allows the user to be hands-free when they use the multimodality of the device themselves when they want to.