Grant: Team Grant: More Years / Better Lives

Older adults are the fastest growing segment of our society and several common chronic conditions present a risk to older adults' health and wellness. Stroke is a chronic condition, which is the leading cause of disability throughout North America and Europe. Nearly one third of individuals who have a stroke will present with aphasia, a communication impairment that affects the ability to speak, understand, read and write. These persistent language impairments can have a negative impact on all aspects of daily life, and people who live with aphasia often report that this negative impact is worse than is reported even in cancer or Alzheimer's disease. The aim of the project is to empower older people with aphasia to improve their communication abilities. We will do this by developing an app for communication and everyday life support called VoiceAdapt. We will apply innovative speech-sensitive technology to the app in order to develop a system that detects and adapts to the language difficulties of the person with aphasia. The system will have built-in features that personalize and adapt to an individual's communication difficulties in specific locations in order to provide individualized exercises to facilitate therapy and recovery. First, the input and feedback of users, including people with aphasia, speech-language therapists and others, will be incorporated into the design and development of the app. Second, the app will be tested in a trial where one group of people with aphasia will receive the VoiceAdapt app for six weeks and another won't. We expect that the group that practices the individualized exercises in VoiceAdapt will have improved language, communication and well-being compared to the other group. It is hoped that the unique features of this technology will help to improve the communication abilities of people with aphasia.