The Need

Patients and people with disabilities have to deal with a lot of difficulties in their everyday lives. Some of the most common problems are:

• Limited or no communication at all with their environment
• Lack of autonomy in their leisure time and
• Not enough exercise during ergotherapy

There are plenty of solutions in the field of Assistive Technologies to make their life better. However, they usually are too expensive, or so complicated, that they become inaccessible to patients and people with disabilities.
The result is that these people are isolated and aren’t properly or not at all rehabilitated, and this has physical and mental implications for them and their environment.

Talk and Play

Talk and Play is a system that allows people with disabilities to:

• communicate with their environment
• be more independent during their leisure time
• receive training and exercise for rehabilitation at home, under the guidance of their therapist.

This way, they are able to communicate, listen to music, watch movies and train for a quicker rehabilitation.

Our main goal was to drastically reduce the total cost of the solution. How we achieved this:

• We created the software and offer it for free 
• We searched for alternative economic solutions regarding hardware.

But we would like to have a significant impact. This is why:

• We offered ready-to-use solutions
• to 3 recognized institutions that support people with disabilities in Greece
• to people with disabilities for use at home
• We offered it for free.
• We allow everyone to adjust Talk and Play to their needs
• The therapist is able to adjust it to the needs of the user
• We are offering the source code under open source licenses, so that everyone can make it better and change it according to their needs.
• We are making sure that the project and its results are known to as many people as possible in order to maximize the impact.

Who can use it

Talk and Play is addressed to:

1. People with no mental problems, who have communication issues due to movement impairments or difficulties in speech (e.g. tracheostomy combined with mobility limitations.
2. People with aphasia (e.g. due to brain damage).

Apart from the groups - end users described above, Talk and Play benefits also:

1. Institutions and scientists dealing with the care and rehabilitation of persons belonging to groups as referred above.
2. Individuals that provide such care at home.

Partners

In this effort we have valuable collaborators: the Recovery Laboratory of the Athens Medical School (Evaggelismos Hospital), ELEPAP, K.K.P.P.A. (Social Care Centre of Attica) ans the Foundation KASP-Hatzipaterio.

With years of experience and expertise in this field, they have a key role in:

1. Specifications analysis, by describing the features of the software that we develop as age ranges, design patterns, colors, sound and visual effects, access modes, difficulty levels, response time, etc. 
2. Exploitation: since they were the first to use the “Talk and Play”, by training the users and their carers, multiplying the benefits.
3. Evaluation, since they provided guidance and evaluated the software throughout the project.
4. Future development, since after the completion of the project they provided ideas and guidance for new enhanced Talk and Play features.

Download

Download now Talk and Play for free on your computer

DIY

In the following table is the development cost of the prototype solution: Talk and Play in Raspberry PI with wireless switch.

For every item and for every design of the 3D printing, the link leads to the supply source (open hardware). 

 * Cost of 3D printing in case that the user has 3D printer

** SciFY has designed a special 3D print file for Rpi 3 top case with the SciFY logo 

Results

Impact: 950+ Downloads

Talk and Play has been completed successfully and the results surpassed our expectations.

• Talk and Play has 950+ Downloads up to now.
• The Talk and Play software has been developed and offered for free and under open source licenses.
• The partners embraced the project: Talk and Play's evaluation of all criteria exceed 4.75 in 5-grade credit scale.
• The original 3 partners increased during the project to 4. Thus, in addition to ELEPAP, the Recovery Laboratory of the Athens Medical School (Evaggelismos Hospital) and K.K.P.P.A. (Social Care Centre of Attica), the Foundation KASP-Hatzipaterio has been added to the partners' list where Talk and Play is installed and used.
• 24 Talk and Play systems have been distributed to people who can use them at home (18 children and 6 adults).
• Other foundations and therapists have expressed their keen interest.
• Apart from the free software, the research for the hardware has led to a range of options that drastically reduces the overall cost of the solution (from 62% to 89%, depending on the option).
• An original solution for a wireless switch has been created, and the designs were distributed as open hardware.
• Communication:
• The media welcomed Talk and Play: Based on two press releases, there were 15 publications until now in the press.
• The response on social media was overwhelming: many special posts and thousands of views of the posts.
• E-Flyers were created.
• Talk and Play was presented in two events, which were attended by over 250 people.
• The next steps have been investigated, and all the partners want to proceed to the second phase, being fully satisfied with SciFY cooperation.
• SciFY continues even today to actively support the project by forming a group of volunteers for support.

Project ID

• Partners: the Recovery Laboratory of the Athens Medical School (Evaggelismos Hospital), ELEPAP, K.K.P.P.A. (Social Care Centre of Attica) ans the Foundation KASP-Hatzipaterio
• Duration: 05/2016-11/2018
• Funding: The project was developed by SciFY with an exclusive donation from Stavros Niarchos Foundation.