VOICER IN MOBILE PLATFORM TO FACILITATE COMMUNICATION FOR THE DISABLED

INTRODUCTION The number of disabled people in Brazil raised from 14,5% to near 24%. Among those, 2,5 million people present difficulties in communication and interpersonal interaction; The importance of Assistive Technology (AT), mainly focused on communication, which is referred as Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC); Voicers; The main goal of this work is to implement and provide a free open source voicer called VoxLaPS, for mobile devices.

MOTIVATION Commercially available voicers with a rigid platform, without adjustments capacity, and costly; Smartphones and tablets more financially accessible; Digital and Social Inclusion; NEDETA partnership.

METHODOLOGY Implementation in 3 parts: base, screen navigation and customization; Application development with Agile Methodology; Tests with doctors of several specialities after the completion of each one of the application parts.

ARCHITECTURE

SYNTHESIS The SVOX synthesizer was used, with the voice "Luciana" in Brazilian Portuguese;

VOICER PROTOTYPE

EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

CONCLUSION According to the parcial results: – Important tool; – Support to medical treatments; – Well-accepted by specialist doctors; – Simplicity and Ease of Use; – Great advance in the AAC field; The tool can also assist in Portuguese teaching; Importance of tests with real patients; Partnership with treatment and rehabilitation centers of people with disabilities, of all ages, and state hospitals.

Authors Contact Ana Irene Alves de Oliveira Nelson Cruz Sampaio Neto Larissa de Sousa Guimarães