A Framework for Speechreading Acquisition Tools
This addresses the need for better speechreading training tools for individuals with hearing loss, but it appears incremental as it builds on existing methods by reframing them into a new framework.
The paper tackles the problem of speechreading acquisition for people with hearing loss by proposing a novel framework for designing Speechreading Acquisition Tools (SATs) to improve skill development, as existing tools are often ineffective due to lack of alignment with contemporary lessons and practice.
At least 360 million people worldwide have disabling hearing loss that frequently causes difficulties in day-to-day conversations. Hearing aids often fail to offer enough benefits and have low adoption rates. However, people with hearing loss find that speechreading can improve their understanding during conversation. Speechreading (often called lipreading) refers to using visual information about the movements of a speaker's lips, teeth, and tongue to help understand what they are saying. Speechreading is commonly used by people with all severities of hearing loss to understand speech, and people with typical hearing also speechread (albeit subconsciously) to help them understand others. However, speechreading is a skill that takes considerable practice to acquire. Publicly-funded speechreading classes are sometimes provided, and have been shown to improve speechreading acquisition. However, classes are only provided in a handful of countries around the world and students can only practice effectively when attending class. Existing tools have been designed to help improve speechreading acquisition, but are often not effective because they have not been designed within the context of contemporary speechreading lessons or practice. To address this, in this thesis I present a novel speechreading acquisition framework that can be used to design Speechreading Acquisition Tools (SATs) - a new type of technology to improve speechreading acquisition.