Speech Therapy Applications based on Speech Technologies

The proposed paper focuses on the area of ICTbased supportive tools for speech therapy in children with speech and hearing disorders in Slovak language. The main idea was to design a concept of the supportive tool, where speech technologies can be used in a new, modern way. The web application was designed to help a child to train a correct pronunciation of particular sounds. To evaluate the similarity of the spoken word, Dynamic Time Warping algorithm was implemented, which measure distance between spoken word and the pattern in the database. Obtained distance help a caregivers or therapist to evaluate the need of continuation in speech therapy with a particular sound, or it is possible to move to another one. We also proved the concept of using automatic speech recognition in the speech therapy to create modern game-like speech therapy tools. The proposed paper brings the first observations from preliminary tests and discuss advantages and drawbacks of designed tools.