I just learned of a new Canadian-made app for people with communication problems, called My Voice.

It looks really promising and I hope to be able to try it out.

The app is free for the next 6 months.

From the news article:

“One of the most devastating aspects of aphasia is its potential to isolate someone because they can no longer communicate as they once did,” said Dr. Alexandra Carling-Rowling, who is leading research into the app’s possible benefits for the Aphasia Institute, Toronto Rehab and Sunnybrook Hospital.

“They can lose their communicative confidence and they lose their ability to participate as they used to. But with MyVoice, they don’t have to constantly rely on a family member, they can go out and do things for themselves.”

MyVoice, created by a team based out of the University of Toronto’s computer science department, is designed to do the job of much more expensive devices designed to assist with communication.

I enjoyed a webinar this afternoon with Christina Merkley, Shift-It-Coach, a “visual-thinking expert” on uses of graphics for different situations. In my work with people with aphasia, I started to learn how to communicate with pictures and drawings. I had never fully understood the power of graphics until I learned that my clients could tell me a lot about their lives, their emotional states, and their activities by using a pencil and paper.

I am going to start using more graphics in meetings and start to work on increasing my comfort with drawing. When I’m ready, I’m going to take one of her courses. For people with aphasia, the graphics person will need to be skilled in understanding. This is where a skilled communication partner comes into play. When you watch her videos and her great work, she is acting as a translator – speech to graphics/words. In aphasia groups that I have facilitated, we did a combination of techniques, words, gestures, and drawings. Even though people laughed at my stick figures, I gradually got better at communicating concepts in graphics.

I’m looking forward to doing more of it.