What does SayLah✌mean?

Inspiration- Saylah, is a phonetic spelling of "selah," a Hebrew word that appears in the Psalms and is a word not spoken but intended to have the reader pause and reflect. Pronunciation varies from region to region. Definitely not inspired by PayLah 😛

• Table of Contents

Goals of this project

• Seek to understand nonverbal population's reasons and concerns for not using their own voice to communicate.
• Help local nonverbal population communicate and express effectively through the use of technology
• Understand what'd be an easy way for the world at large to listen and understand nonverbal individuals thoughts.
• Explore the use of localised Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) tools, text to speech AIs, low-tech tools to help nonverbal individuals to communicate.

Who do we want to help?

• Persons with moderate autism - nonverbal (90% of AAC users)
• Persons with communication impediments | Persons with aphasia (PWAs)
• We're discussing with speech pathologists as well

Why?

• There is a lack of localisation of AAC voices
• Current AAC apps are clunky for their cost price.
• Every user has different expressive needs
• There is a wide range of speech pathology to which SayLah✌ can be adapted for

Proposed Solution

<aside> 💡 We will build a better text-to-speech communication tool/AAC tool to help the nonverbal/non-speaking population communicate effectively with the world at large. Where possible, we will also aim for localisation of the solution as well.

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How will we get there?

No solution comes with product first in mind. Here, we present our findings and thought processes that lead us to our solution.

Research

https://youtu.be/owr2aIHRJA4

AAC 101: Who Should Use AAC and Why?

Design Thinking - UX

During our research, we came across various other groups who can benefit from our solution, but for now, we have decided to focus on the needs of non-verbal children.

Currently, non-verbal children use AAC in 2 main ways:

• as a means to communicate with others
• as a tool through which they learn other subjects

As part of our design thinking process, we are exploring the following areas:

• What are some common words and localised words that are not currently present in other AACs?
• What kind of illustrations/visual cues do children recognise and associate with words?
• How will children use AACs to learn and communicate?
• Are there ways where we can motivate children to use the AAC more to communicate their thoughts and wishes?
  • eg. gamification / positive reinforcement (rewards)
• How can we localise the voice output such that it does not sound alien to children and the people they communicate with, but rather such that the voice/accent sounds familiar?

Ideation & Development

Freespeech

^Forked by @Sid S!

We intend to build on what Freespeech has done and localize it for use for nonverbals in Singapore, starting with children.

Our development goals include:

• Localised words and voice
• Accessibility of the app - it will be built as a web app that can be used on multiple platforms
• (Future) Predict and suggest words/icons and sentences that they use more often, allowing for faster communication while using the AAC
• (Future) Customise to the needs of different groups of users

Singapore-specific information