An Experience of Information Visualization and Interaction for Aphasic Persons

Computers have been used for language therapy for aphasia persons. It is known that the usage of computer is effective for it. There are many problems for it but our interests are especially about the aspect of information visualization and interaction between computers and aphasia persons. In this paper, we report a prototype of rehabilitation system and the evaluation of the system by aphasia persons and speech therapists (STs). Aphasia persons have troubles to understand language. Most of them have troubles to read sentences. Also most of them have troubles to write characters and also lines in hand because the cause of aphasia is damages to the left part of brain. The proposed rehabilitation system allows aphasia persons to undergo treatment without writing characters or lines. Since they are not good at reading sentences, the user interface is designed especially using information visualization, as few characters. The evaluation of the system by aphasia persons and STs results good grade and both of them want to use the rehabilitation system by tablet computers much further.