Breath enabled Talking Device helps the speech impaired | Fusion - WeRIndia

People with speech impairment have to struggle to speak out their thoughts. Who cares about their frustration? But, a 16-year old boy cared about them. Arsh Shah Dilbagi is a student from Delhi who invented an amazing device in which speech impaired can use their breath for interacting with others. TALK is an AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) device which is very helpful for people who have developmental disabilities like Parkinson’s disease, Locked-In Syndrome and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, and with speech impairments such as Dysarthia. It is even beneficial for Mutes to deliver their communication in a normal form of speech.

TALK is a first-of-kind AAC device in the world as it is the only device that uses breath for interaction. The technology of device helps the users to dictate letters by recognizing the variations in their breath and synthesize them into sentences. The device fits into a pocket.

TALK functions in two modes. One is Communication mode and another is Command mode. Command mode is useful if the users want to speak out the predefined commands like W – ‘Water. Communication mode helps to encode the symbols into commonly used phrases. For instance if the user dictates ‘HH’, then it will be converted into ‘Hello, How are you?’

TALK is one of the fastest AAC devices because it takes only 0.4 seconds to dictate ‘E’ and 0.8 seconds to dictate ‘A’. Users have to place the sensor under their noses and make shorter and longer exhales. These will create dots and dashes which will be converted into words and phrases later. The cost of TALK is $199. It includes the AAC device and the earclip. Users can also purchase the earclip alone for $99 which can be used with existing AAC devices.

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