Providing Access to Life Stories for Adults with Communication and Language Impairment

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Robert is a 50 year old man who was a professional footballer into his early 20s. A stroke at 22 resulted in loss of speech and mobility. He uses a wheelchair and needs daily living assistance. Robert often tries to tell others stories about his football career as it is in telling his story that he hopes people will view him as someone other than a man in a chair . However, because of his severe speech impairment, it takes him time and effort to express even short messages; most people lose patience. Robert worries that when his older sister dies, there will be no one left who knows his life story and his social identity will be lost.Danni, a 30 year old woman with cerebral palsy, has never been able to communicate intelligibly using natural speech. As a child Danni was unable to engage in storytelling and did not develop the skills needed to share stories. Danni has participated in research projects and has demonstrated the ability to learn storytelling skills but remains unable to participate equally in interactive communication. She uses her voice output communication aid to express needs and wants, but sharing stories is frustratingly slow. She wants to explore new possibilities and make new friends, but is severely limited by her existing device. Robert and Danni are two of 365,000 people in the United Kingdom who could benefit more from augmentative and alternative communication. Although they both use voice output communication aids (VOCAs), they find great difficulty in engaging in interactive conversation. Current VOCAs are well suited to supporting the expression of needs and wants (such as I am thirsty), but more complex interactions such as conversational narrative (e.g., Did I tell you about the time I went to Spain?) and social dialogue (e.g., pub chats about football) is not well supported.This project aims to work with adults with severe speech and physical impairment, their support staff, families and friends to harness existing research technology to support them in formulating, editing and telling their own narratives. In particular, we will be using natural language generation to create stories from basic information relating to time, place, people and activity. For example, the nonspeaking person may use a photograph as a prompt to when, where, who and what are in the photo. From this information, it is possible to generate the sentences: Last week I was in London. My sister was there. We went up the London Eye. By choosing to add a positive or negative comment, the system might generate It was great. or I didn't like it. Nonspeaking adults will be involved in providing requirements for the system and will actively participate in designing the system functionality and interface. The system will allow the user to embellish narratives during interactive conversation and to maintain access to narrative over the lifespan of individuals. The end product will be a high level prototype which will be evaluated with users in different environments.