Orofacial cleft is a birth defect that results in tissues of the face, mouth, or lip to not be fused together correctly. At a very young age, these children undergo surgical procedures, and will need long-term speech therapy. SpokeIt is an interdisciplinary project created at UC Santa Cruz’s computational media department and psychology department in conjunction with the medical team at UC Davis. SpokeIt is a game created with the goal of making practicing speech fun and effective. SpokeIt benefits children with Cleft speech because it makes practice seamless, gives speech therapists access to their patient’s progress, and assigns words and phrases that are suitable for the child to exercise. SpokeIt employs a dynamic curriculum that adjusts its difficulty as the child plays.
Researchers: Jared Duval, Zak Rubin, Sri Kurniawan