Maintaining effective communication with those around us, whether in the personal or work environment.
These challenges led to the creation of the TalkAACtive application for Android mobile devices, which aims to allow adults with communication difficulties to practice and self-assess their speech and writing through pictograms thanks to a natural language generation system (NLG) of its own conception and design, easily adaptable to any work environment as required. Phrases and sentences can be created with a sequence of pictograms, although their transcription does not always agree in gender, verbal tense, etc. A step further is required for it to resemble natural language. This application seeks to resolve this discrepancy by means of an NLG engine that, based on the chosen pictograms, automatically produces communication close to human speech. Once the output is available, the user can work on their pronunciation and/or writing by comparing their voice and/or text entered by keyboard, with the aim of improving and enhancing both of them in their work.
As a result, the intention is to provide users with an effective tool that enhances their oral and/or written skills in their work environment, so that once users have used it they will completely drop communication through pictograms and be able to adapt their expression to integrate into their work without help. TalkAACtive seeks to support the employment of these people and promote their integration in the workforce, thus preventing social isolation. With it, users will get used to understanding instructions and keeping conversations going, making a positive impact on interaction with co-workers or supervisors and it will be oriented to meet the requirements of professionals (speech therapists, etc.) responsible for monitoring and the requirements of line managers for the roles they will take up. Thanks to the project´s "for all" design philosophy, it is expected that other communities that require communication practice can also benefit.
