Statistics say that there are more than three million people around the world that are living with aphasia, a condition that brings the loss of language capabilities due to an injury to the brain. This of course has a profoundly negative effect on these people’s communication and social relationships. A new app developed by Samsung Italia called Wemogee is bringing a new tool for these people to still communicate with family and friends and better express themselves and understand the people they’re talking to as well.
The app actually uses emojis and serves as a translator for both the people with aphasia and those they’re communicating with. It was developed together with speech therapists and actually has a library of more than 100 pre-defined phrases, each with a logical sequence of emojis that pertain to basic needs and emotional expressions. There are six main categories for these phrases, namely everyday life, eating and drinking, feelings, help, recreational activities, and anniversaries and celebrations.
Patients will be able to chose from several panels of visual options and the app’s user interface makes it easy for them. Whoever they are communicating with will then receive the message in text form but when they reply they will choose from the pre-set textual phrases. The emojis used are a combination of gestures, images, and facial expressions which are essential in our communication process.
The app can also serve as a practice tool for aphasia patients who are still undergoing rehabilitation. It will be available on the Google Play Store starting April 28 and supports English and Italian languages.
SOURCE: Samsung
