Yes

Aims to improve understanding of spoken word.

Includes 800 words - presented singularly or in a sentence

Gamified activities - match spoken words to pictures.

Choose sets of words to practice

Part of a current clinical trial - can choose to participate in research during use of app - or decline.

Tested in clinical trial with 30 participants living with aphasia. They compelted 85 hours practice over 12 week period. 31% imprvement seen for practiced words.

Speechify is a text to speech tool. It can be used to read aloud any typed text: messages, social media, e-books, PDF's, or photograph text to read pages from books, magazines and other text

Highlight text as you read

Choose speech rate

Choose voice

Syncs across devices

A phone/tablet based app which targets issues with single word reading associated with alexia & aphasia

Written and spoken words as well as pictures are used to re-build associations between semantics, orthographics and phonology

600 stimuli items are provided and up to 30 'trials'

Initially, the user is required to complete a test of reactions, vision, reading, spelling and writing. They then do 'look & listen' exercises to familiarise themselves with the target words.  There are then 'trials' using auditory to written word matching with pictorial support.  The initial tests are time consuming but can be paused

Familiarisation tasks and trials are automatically created based on performance and change according to progress made

Audio and visual, on-screen aphasia guides are provided to guide the user through how the app works

Results are recorded and include training time taken, reading accuracy and reading speed

Tasks to work on spoken and written comprehension of nouns, verbs and occupations.

2200 functional stimuli items, from 10 different categories e.g. clothing, health & body, home & garden, leisure, nature

Includes a training section where the user can familiarise themselves and practise with stimuli items before moving onto the comprehension tasks

In the training tasks, the client can hear and/or see 2 examples of the target word, then match the word to the correct picture (choice of 3)

In the photo shuffle: tasks, the client is required to match the spoken and/or written word to the pictures (choice of 2-6)

In the word match tasks, the client is required to match the picture  to the correct spoken and/or written word (choice of 3)

A free app with 27 categories of symbol supported, spoken messages to support face to face communication

e.g. emergencies, Family, Yes/No, Feelings, self care, places, holidays etc.

An information screen also tells the communication partner that the user has had a stroke and the areas of communication they now struggle with

Based on a simple communication book format developed by Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland

60 tasks with a functional bias to work on:

• Auditory comprehension (sounds/words/paragraphs/rhyming/auditory instructions)
• Speech (word repetition, picture naming, reading aloud)
• Semantics (written & spoken)
• Spelling (picture naming, copying, anagrams, auditory naming)
• Reading (picture-word matching, reading comprehension, written lexical decision making)
• Attention
• Visual processing
• Time telling
• Map reading
• Cognitive function
• Problem solving
• Planning
• Reading & understanding numbers

There are 2 versions of the therapy app - a user version & a clinician version

In the clinician version, the clinician can remotely edit exercise sets and access results

Supplier: Constant

Use a smartphone or tablet to magnify text or images 

Brief description

• Point the phone or tablet at an image or text and use the on-screen magnifier function to increase the size of the text or image for someone with visual difficulties

Text to speech program. Reads text aloud as it is typed so you can listen to what you are typing 

Brief description

• Spelling errors are highlighted and alternative suggestions are given
• Word prediction can be enabled
• Option to hear each word as it's typed or to listen only when a sentence is completed

Who could benefit

People who 

Screen reading software. Take a photo of written text and it will read the text back to you aloud

Brief description

• Available as an app or software

• Choose to hear the text read word by word, line by line or hear the whole text read out

• Speed up/slow down the screen reading voice

Comprises a naming test and 3 treatment activities: describe, guess & repeat. There are over 500 stimulus items from categories such as personal, out & about, food & drink, objects

Test: the user is asked to name a picture aloud (there is no option for them to record their spoken attempt). If they struggle, they can request 4 written/spoken options to pick from. The user then judges whether they said the word correctly or not by clicking on a tick/cross

Describe: the user is encouraged to describe a picture using semantic feature analysis prompts (there is no option for them to record their spoken attempt). They are not required to judge whether their attempts were correct or not

Guess: the user is encouraged to name an item from a series of semantic descriptions (there is no option for them to record their spoken attempt). They are then prompted to judge whether their attempt was correct or not

Repeat: A picture is provided and a spoken voice repeats the word 3 times. The user is encouraged to tap out the word and verbally repeat it (there is no option for them to record their spoken attempt). They are not required to make a judgement about whether their attempt was correct

Results are stored in-app and can also be emailed 

NB The app uses Apple voices which are quite robotic, however enhanced US voices can be used if they've been downloaded to the user's ipad.  Users need to have good self-monitoring skills to know whether their utterance was correct