COMUNICA - Tools for Speech and Language Therapy

This paper introduces the systems and technologies used for the development of computer-aided speech and language therapy tools. These tools ("Pre-Lingua", "Vocaliza" and "Cuéntame") aim to help speech and language disabled people to improve their communication abilities, covering all the processes in the acquisition of the spoken language (from phonation and articulation to descriptive and comprehensive language). The applications are conceived with the idea of supplying an easy interface for speech therapy in any language, although focusing on the needs of speech therapists in Spain and Latin America. One of the key points in the applications is the possibility of automating the process of speech therapy thus the child who is under therapy can run it in an unsupervised way after a short time configuration done by the speech therapist. These tools require some improvements in Speech Technologies such as Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and pronunciation verification in order to help users to improve their communication skills.