User Acceptance of ‘Let’s Talk Now’ Mobile App for Dysarthric Children

Abstract

Dysarthria is a neurological disorder that damages of motor speech articulation. Young children who suffered from this disorder have no problem with their cognition, but they have difficulties to speak out their words. They could not have an accurate and smooth communication with their family and friends due to this disorder. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the user acceptance of an interactive speaking tool in the form of a mobile application named 'Let's Talk Now' which was designed with redundant multimedia elements for the use of dysarthric children aged 3 to 7 years old. This mobile appwas designed and developed as an early intervention to help the dysarthric who are facing problem to communicate and enable them to be understood by others. It focuses on daily usable conversation terms for family, greeting and expressions, places, ordering food and beverages, activities and asking for help. This study involved 15 respondents who are related to dysarthria namely therapists, parents, and teacher of dysarthric children. The 'Let's Talk Now' mobile app’s acceptance was evaluated using the USE (Usefulness, Satisfaction and Ease of Use) Questionnaire (Lund, 2001) which was used to measure its user acceptance. The findings described that all of the respondents agreed that the 'Let's Talk Now' mobile app is usable and suitable in helping the communication between dysarthric children and people.