AN INTERACTIVE MOBILE APPLICATION FOR SUPPORTING PEOPLE WITH SPEECH DISABILITIES

Abstract

Today, diagnoses related to speech defects are established much more often than twenty years ago. Detection of violations in the pronunciation of sounds and the structure of sentences are observed in 80% of preschoolers, while half a century ago, three quarters of children could speak clearly. Another problem is that more and more adults are left with unresolved language impairments that accompany them throughout their lives.

Many people tend to believe that speech therapy is limited only to the treatment of children with speech disorders. In reality, however, speech therapists can help with a variety of speech, communication, and language-related symptoms experienced by patients, including those with blast brain injuries.

Due to the rapid advancement of technology and the widespread use of mobile devices, the utilization of mobile applications in the field of speech therapy opens up new possibilities for enhancing methods of correcting speech disorders in both children and adults. Mobile applications serve as powerful tools for delivering speech therapy services, providing access to corrective exercises at the user's convenience. This study aims to justify and present the software implementation of a speech therapy system in the form of a mobile application using modern tools. The article provides a detailed description of the architectural solutions used during the application development, its structure, and a comparison with existing analogs. A distinctive feature of the software application is its orientation not only at children, but also at an adult audience, and the utilization of artificial intelligence tools to implement functionality related to tongue twister reproduction. It is expected that the studied software system will contribute to the improvement of speech therapists' work methods and enhance the quality of speech therapy services provided through mobile technologies.