Using IT to inform and rehabilitate aphasie patients

Abstract

Our age, building around the World Wide Web, is called the era of information. This usually means simple access to news, theoretical or practical knowledge in science and engineering. But, less in the forefront, new ways of representation, embodiment of information give a very powerful hand in treatment of special patients. Recognising these offerings of modern information technology, a group of language therapist asked us to collaborate in developing a new therapy for aphasic patients. Aphasia is an impairment of language, affecting the production or comprehension of speech and the ability to read or write. The most common version of aphasia is acquired aphasia: about 23-40 % of stroke survivors suffer from this impairment. The rehabilitation of aphasia is a medical, special treatment (speech therapy), which is the task of psychologists or language therapists. We developed a multimedia rehabilitation software package and an interactive virtual world, a Virtual Home to improve readiness of speech and ability of orientation for helping the therapy. Both programs aim at strengthening the patients' grasp of every-day vocabulary and improving their spelling skills with demonstrative environments and graded tasks. In this paper we present the development processes and the real-life use of this new treatment, accompanied by the testing results.