Many individuals like Amaka, a 16 year old with speech impairement are faced with significant challenges in communicating their thoughts and needs and this, most times lead to misunderstanding, frustration and maybe depression. The goal of this product is to design a mobile app that bridges the communication gap for people with speech impairement ie inaudibility.

The users of the product in this case study are people like Amaka; a 16 year old girl with speech impairement that faces difficulty in communicating with people because they're unable to hear her except when they bring their ear close to her face and her caregiver who needs to constantly communicate with her. The communication barrier that can be borne out of this for Amaka and people can like her can limit their participation in various aspects of their daily lives.

3 Days

Visual and User Interface Design, User Experience, User Research and Prototyping

Putting Amaka's needs in mind, I designed the SpeakAssist app that helps amplify and transcribe Amaka's inaudible speech to both Amaka and other people's hearing. The app picks what she tries to say from her device front camera and in built microphone by mirroring her facial expressions, mouth movements and her voice using advanced speech recognition and image processing.

Main Features of the product include:
Training screens where Amaka upon her first usage of the app after signing up is expected to train the app with her voice and facial expressions.

Recording Screens: After training the app with her voice and facial expressions using image processing and speech recognition, Amaka can now proceed to record herself on these screens, The recorded audio is played back with a transcription text which she can edit incase of an error.

Saved coversation screen: This screen shows where Amaka get to save her conversations. she can replay the audio at her choosen time instead of recording afresh especially when she has said what she intends to say in a conversation before.

Amaka's speech pattern includes highly unconventional pronunciations of certain words. For example, she may pronounce "breakfast" as "blek-fas" and "good" as "gul."
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Design Solution:
Miss May, the listener and Amaka’s caregiver, initially finds it challenging to understand Amaka's unconventional speech and pronunciation. "SpeakAssist" automatically corrects unconventional pronunciation and it also produces transcriptions that can be edited which also take effect in the audio that will be played out.

SpeakAssist was designed with a  commitment to the 4 accessibility guidelines in other to ensure that individuals with various abilities and needs can use the app effectively.
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It is Perceivable to all users regardless of the screen size because there is enough white space, text alternative to the audio output and even under various lightning conditions, the contrast management was employed.

It is Operable because visible focus indicators were used for interactive elements, also a consistent navigation structure was adopted in order to enable all users including users of assistive technology and users with cognitive disabilities.

SpeakAssist is Understandable because simple, clear and concise instructions were used within the app, also actionable elements were highlighted making it understandable for all users with varying abilities.

SpeakAssist is Robust. it can be interpreted by a wide range of users. Content of SpeakAssist remains accessible no matter the changes that occur.

SpeakAssist is an innovative communication app designed to address the unique speech communication challenges faced by individuals like Amaka using advanced technologies. Using SpeakAssist, Amaka can start start new conversations or play a saved conversation for her caregiver and others especially things she says frequently. SpeakAssist empowers the likes of Amaka to communicate clearly, fosters inclusivity and promotes independence for individuals facing speech challenges.

SpeakAssist was adjudged to be among the top 3 submissions among over 150 submissions for the overall accessibility app challenge which comprised of 5 project briefs spanning different accessibility areas and No 1 submission for the speech impairement project brief by the mentors of HNGX who were the primary clients in this case for capturing the project objective and it's ease of use.