The Malia Project - Makers asked to help an 11yr old communicate

11-year-old Malia has cerebral palsy.
Can you help her communicate?
Link: https://makershare.com/missions/malia-project

Malia has boundless curiosity and is ready to explore the world. But her speech is not clear and most people outside her family have trouble understanding her. Propose your design for a device or system that would help Malia connect with the world around her.

“There is such a need for children like our sweet daughter, Malia, who have much to share and express but the average listener will not get it,” says Donna, Malia’s mother. Donna imagines a device that could understand the sounds Malia produces and map them to the correct words and phrases; she calls it “the Articulator".

We’ve been working with Malia and her mother to acquire audio recordings of Malia speaking. We’ve created 42 recordings with associated transcripts that can be downloaded as zip files from google drive, or listened to online from SoundCloud (Playlist is currently set to private, so you need a free account to view). To see transcripts on SoundCloud ensure you go to the tracks webpage (click the track name, not the play icon), as the track description isn’t available from the playlist page.

To qualify for this mission, you must submit either a product design that can be rebuilt locally, or provide a download to an application that Malia can test. Viable entries will be tested onsite with Malia to verify usability.
@talkers

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I am interested in meeting her. I’ll PM you.

There is a tool like this - capturing known speech and translating it to a more widely understandable speech or text. I saw it 3 years ago, and it was quite advanced. They were based out of Arkansas. I wonder how much more they can do now.

I’ll ping a couple of Assitive tech friends to see if they can remember the firm.

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