Document Type : Original Articles
Authors
1 Bachelors in Audiology and Speech Language Pathology (BASLP) Speech Language Pathologist, Abilities Rehab Center, Chennai, India.
2 Department of Speech Language Pathology, Sri Ramachandra Faculty Audiology and Speech Language Pathology (SRFASLP), Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research (DU), Chennai, India
Abstract
Background: There is growing need for online therapy in the recent past due to various reasons such as, the COVID 19 pandemic, longer travel distance and duration of speech therapy sessions. The purpose of this study was to develop an application that will facilitate parents during speech therapy for children with stuttering. This app will provide a dynamic interaction between the Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) and the families of children with stuttering.
Methods: A cross sectional study design was carried out. The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of an app for parents of children with stuttering in the age range of 3 to 12 years. The app consisted of a brief description of analogies for stuttering with a video demonstration of the analogy. The contents of the app were evaluated by three speech and language pathologists who have minimum experience of 5 years in handling children with fluency disorders. 13 parents of children with stuttering participated in the study. The app was administered on children with stuttering along with their parents. Descriptive statistics and percentage analysis was calculated for background variables.
Results: Findings revealed that almost all the parents found the instructions being provided in the app was easily understandable. 70% of the parents found it to be highly satisfying on the usefulness of the app. On assessment of the functionality of application, nearly 77% found it to be high satisfying. Nearly 85% of the parents found the app to very user friendly.
Conclusion: Majority of the parents found this prototype app to be easy to use; efficient in training their children and the functionality of the app was highly accepted. This application assures to bring about a change in the child’s speech and facilitated effective communication. In future, this app can reach greatest number of clients to promote better fluency skills at a low-cost and effective way.
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