Kate Beckett, a specialist in speech and language therapy, has announced the upcoming launch of her application, Ultimate Speech Sounds. This innovative tool is primarily aimed at aiding children who are experiencing persistent speech sound issues, even after their counterparts have ceased to make the same mistakes.
These speech sound errors are not uncommon in children during their language acquisition phase and often resolve on their own as the child matures. Nonetheless, the persistent speech difficulties are where the new app comes alongside speech therapists, providing a supportive tool for them to employ in their work.
One distinguishing feature of Ultimate Speech Sounds is its ability to facilitate interaction between therapists and parents. It’s crucial that parents correctly and consistently put into practice the recommended remedial exercises at home, as this plays a central role in overcoming any given disorder.
Kate Beckett explains, “The app serves as a dynamic visual tool that simplifies at-home exercises for both parent and child, making it easier for them to remember the therapist’s instructions”. The app also tracks the progress of home practice, allowing therapists to refine treatment methods as per the child’s developmental progress. Furthermore, it incentivises parents by showing them the tangible effects of their continued efforts. Beckett highlights the importance of parental involvement, as 16 per cent of the correction happens in the clinic while the rest is dealt with at home.
Beckett has served as a speech therapist across the UK, New Zealand, and Ireland and observed proportional sound disorders among English learning children across these countries. While there are applications available to help with such issues, none cater for an Irish accent, prompting Beckett to consider an alternative.
Beckett shares, “During the Covid lockdown, I was attempting to teach children speech using an American accentued model, which was insufficient as an Irish accent was needed.” She could recognise the potential of broadening the range of accents covered by the app, which led to the creation of Ultimate Speech Sounds. It tutors phonics in seven various English-speaking country accents, such as Australian, Canadian, New Zealand, and South African, further than just British and American accents.
The app is structured around ‘Dara’ – a child avatar, or digitised automated realistic articulator. However, unlike its competitors, Dara displays the full face, enabling child users to better understand sound formation.
Many current applications portray an isolated mouth and tongue, a depiction that young children struggle to connect with their own body parts. However, Dara is a different app where children can observe how the avatar articulates sounds in both front and side views. The sounds are correctly pronounced and children can mimic the mouth movements of the avatar for better pronunciation.
Beckett has dedicated substantial input to enhance Dara’s graphics, making it visually captivating for kids. Moreover, being an interaction between two children, it increases the user friendliness of the app.
Nonetheless, since the app is targeted at kids and requires shared data, child safeguarding in line with GDPR became a major concern for Beckett. To address this, she has partnered with a company that specialises in securing children’s data. They have monitored the app’s development at every step, ensuring it complies with international standards.
The Ultimate Speech Sounds app is set to launch in the upcoming year with the preliminary product planned to be completed and tested by a team of forty Irish and British speech therapists this summer.
The business model plans for an annual fee to be paid by therapists utilising the app. However, Beckett assures that the cost per patient would remain reasonable.
Up to now, Beckett has estimated the start-up costs to be around €25,000, with support from Enterprise Ireland and Wicklow LEO. Her foreseeable next move is to raise €750,000 to expand her team and to globally launch the app, mainly focusing on penetrating the U.S. market which is believed to have the highest scalability potential.