Verbal+Apraxia+and+Social+Networking

By Sheila Lewis Fall 2014 "Verbal Apraxia is a neurological speech disorder in which a person has trouble saying what he or she wants to say correctly and consistently. Another name for verbal apraxia is Developmental Apraxia of Speech. It occurs in children and is present from birth." My youngest daughter has this speech disorder. She has had intensive speech therapy since she was 2 ½ years old. It was apparent to us when she was almost two years old that her speech was not developing as it should. She had no words at that point. Once she started in speech therapy, progress was slow. She understood everything that was said to her and knew what she wanted to say, but could not make her muscles produce the sounds. She had to be taught how to make each sound in the English language! Research shows that children who have spoken language problems are at greater risk for literacy related problems. “There is an overwhelming consensus that **verbal skills are the most influential in literacy development** (Catts, Hu, Larrivee, & Swank, 1994). ” T **he children with developmental verbal dyspraxia did show significant differences and did poorer on these same reading and spelling tests than did their age-matched typically developing peers ****. ” ** (Stackhouse, 1997). My daughter is now 13 ½ years old and a 7th grader in middle school. Today, her speech is about 95% intelligible, unless she’s talking fast, then it’s quite jumbled. She has struggled with reading and is still not where she should be, but she is beginning to enjoy reading! Her spelling is atrocious! She has received intensive instruction in many strategies for learning to spell, but it just doesn’t take hold. Luckily word prediction software and spellcheck has been available to her at school. Most recently, my daughter asked if she could set up a Facebook account. We explained the do’s and don’ts and then gave her the go ahead. She doesn’t have a wide range of friends, so I was glad that she was initiating a means of communicating. Then I started to receive some of her posts… and I cringed. Her spelling was atrocious! I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to curb her enthusiasm. I thought, what would people think about her writing? Spelling isn’t something that friends would necessarily notice in school, but on Facebook… it would be very noticeable. Her phonetic spelling looks more like something you’d get from a first grader. Would she be teased or made fun of? As I was researching what Facebook could offer to someone with a spelling disability, I came upon “[|Ghotit Real Writer & Reader software].” It’s advertised as an assistive technology for people with Dyslexia. It seemed like the answer for my daughter. It’s a spell checker, proofreader, word predictor, grammar checker, text to speech reader, etc. It offers a tremendous benefit to people with dyslexia and other learning disabilities. Unfortunately, it costs quite a bit and could be cost prohibitive for many potential users. Then I realized as I was using my iphone-newly updated to iOS 8, it has word prediction capabilities! So, I called my daughter down and told her to grab her iPad and get onto Facebook. I told her to post something. As she did, up popped the text. She instantly was able to choose the correct spellings for what she wanted to say. The smile that spread across her face said it all! No longer do I need to worry about what her posts will look like. She can confidently communicate in her world with confidence. People who have learning disabilities and/or speech and language disabilities are able to fully access social networks like Facebook. Predictive software is available to download onto a computer or through an app for a personal device, or built into the operating system of your device at no extra cost. My daughter doesn't currently own an iphone, but after seeing what it could offer to her, there's a good chance that it could show up under the Christmas tree!

@http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/voice/pages/apraxia.aspx @https://www.kintera.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=chKMI0PIIsE&b=701777&ct=464197 @http://www.ghotit.com/ @https://www.apple.com/ios/whats-new/quicktype/