Speech Technologies for Language Therapy

Abstract

This chapter presents the development and use of speech technologies in language therapy for children with hearing disabilities. It describes the challenges that must be addressed to design and construct a system to support effective interactions. The chapter begins with an introduction to speech and language therapy and discusses how speech-based systems can provide useful tools for speech and language therapy and to overcome the lack of sufficient human resources to help all children who require it. Then it describes the construction of adequate speech recognition systems for children, using artificial neural networks and hidden Markov models. Next, a case study is presented with the system we have been developing for speech and language therapy for children in a special education school. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the obtained results and the lessons learned from our experiences that will hopefully inform and encourage other researchers, developers, and educators to develop learning tools for individuals with disabilities.