Irish tool for non verbal children to be made available

A new language tool that allows non verbal children to communicate in the Irish language is being made freely available online.

The Geabaire app uses the dialects and structures of the Irish language and those behind the technology said it is now a global model for other minority languages.

The symbol to speech technology was developed after the mother of two autistic children, who are both minimally speaking, approached researchers in Trinity College Dublin to ask them if a speech generating app could be developed for the Irish language.

Julia Cummins, who has since become involved with the project and is doing a PHD on its development, said she had the idea after watching her daughter and son, now aged 14 and ten, using English language versions of the technology.

"They were using an app where they could press a symbol, it would represent a word and there would be a speech output, and they were able to combine these words into sentences, so they could get their needs met and express themselves and talk about what they were interested in.

"But there was no equivalent of that for the Irish language, and it was impossible to adapt the English language version because the structure of Irish is so different," she said.

"They're hearing Irish all around them, at home, amongst my husband's Irish-speaking family and in school but they weren't able to express themselves. They weren't able to show what they know.

"They weren't able to integrate with their peers in the language of the community, in the language of their school. So now they can do that, they can show what they know and what they're interested in. It's just really a sense of belonging and community within the Irish language," she added.

"A really special moment that we had was that I managed to record the first time that my elder daughter said 'Dia dhuit a Mhamó' to her Mamó and just the absolute delight on her face when I did that was just a really special moment," she said.

In Gaelscoil Eoin in Dublin's Ballsbridge, Ms Cummins ten-year-old son, Conall Mac Con Iomaire has been using Geabaire, which his Principal Cristín Ní Chairealláin said has benefited everyone in the school community.

"Everybody in his class knows all about it. They all like to have a go at using it with him. They talk to him through it.

"They are fascinated with it. So not only is it a communication tool for Conall, but it's like a point of communication for everybody. They just love chatting to Conall with it in their own time. They'll wander over and have a little chat, so it's a really inclusive piece of tech, and it's really Conall's voice," she added.

Neasa Ní Chiaráin, Assistant Professor at the School of Linguistic, Speech & Communications Sciences in Trinity College Dublin said the technology had to be developed particularly for the Irish language but is now a global model for other minority languages.

"What we have now is very much not a translation of an English tool. It's built from the ground up, and we have a lot of learning done along the way. Irish has its own grammar, word order, dialects, and it is crucial that that's brought in," she added.

She said the technology is available in a number of Irish dialects but that work is continuing to grow and develop the model.

"In an application like this, the voice is crucial and the coverage of the various dialects. The voice you pick is going to depend on where you live, on your family, on the people that surround you. In technology development, we're still a long way from that, and that's where we're still building.

"And there's a lot of work to be done towards building a bank of voices to make sure that people can choose a voice that suits themselves, towards building expressivity into those synthetic voices. We're not there yet, and even the major world languages, the technology isn't really there yet for that. But that's why this is such an interesting problem to be working on," she added.

While its main aim is to help children in Irish speaking schools, the developers also hope Geabaire, which means Chatterbox in English, will help non verbal children in English speaking schools have access to the Irish language.

The Team at Trinity College are making this tool available for free on abair.ie/geabaire.

An app based version is due to be available on the Apple and Android app stores in the coming days.