iCanSpeak is a deeply personal project. It comes from years of sharing the challenges of someone who stutters, and looking for anything you can do to help.
In 1992, as a 5 year old, Andrew Johnson began his speech therapy journey. He and his parents were initially told, "Don't worry, he has the vocabulary of a 10 year old, he will out grow it." He did not.
Andrew began his speech therapy in 1992, and has continued to today. Over the years of individual therapy and specialized courses it became clear that some level of computerization would help in his regular therapy sessions, and in his personal daily practice.
By 1999, the iCanSpeak project had progressed to custom software developed by his father, Jamie Johnson. This software ran on a desktop computer and supported the work that Andrew was doing with his Speech Language Pathologist, Jacquee Blum Glance. By 2003, iCanSpeak migrated to running on an early smart phone for mobility, and now with version 2.0 in 2017, it is becoming a full suite of tools running on an iPhone.
Vision
Our short term vision:
- To provide the tools to assist someone who stutters in their daily usage with the Live module of the app which emulates choral speaking.
To provide tools in the Techniques module that allows a Speech Language Pathologist working with a user to establish effective shaping techniques that help a speaker to handle different classes of sounds.
Our longer term vision:
- To provide the tools in the Care module that allow Speech Language Pathologist to remotely assign and monitor exercises of shaping techniques so that a user can practice regularly outside of therapy sessions.
- To provide researchers with secure and anonymous access to the data generated by users in order to help understand how the tools and techniques impact the long term fluency success of users.
- To increase the overall understanding of causes and mitigation techniques for stuttering.
It is a big dream, and we need lots of participants and feedback to make it happen.