Designing Pachi: A Verbal Language Learning Application for Children with Hearing Impairment in India

Abstract

Language is crucial for a child’s development, especially for those with Hearing Impairment (HI), making speech and language acquisition challenging. Early intervention positively impacts language development in HI children, but challenges persist due to limited resources and unmet demand in India. While auditory and speech training is given to young children for mainstream integration, formal therapy accessibility is limited by geographical and socio-economic constraints. This paper introduces a tablet-based application for HI children (0–48 months) and facilitators, enhancing verbal language development in Hindi.

It involves initial field visits that identified challenges faced by HI preschoolers, leading to the design of a physical toolkit with three speech therapy games. These games focused on auditory participation, lip-speech cue recognition, and articulation, tested with 10 participants.

Building on it, expert consultations shaped a comprehensive four-stage therapy model for Hindi language learning, covering auditory skills, verbal comprehension, speech, and language development. Utilizing the four-stage model, the digital application Pachi was developed. Aimed at a broader audience without speech therapist access, it offers 10–12-min daily modules tailored to the ISD scale. A sample module for 13–15 months ‘Hearing Age’ involves four games aligned with the four stages - focusing on auditory training, vocabulary building, pronunciation, and articulation.