King's College London

Communication is essential for connecting with loved ones, participating in communities, and engaging in work and hobbies. Effective communication involves both verbal (speaking, writing) and non-verbal (gestures, tone) elements. Combined, these are often termed ‘total communication’. Total communication is especially important for people with communication disabilities, who make up one third of stroke survivors and 2-3 children in each classroom. Current technology design mostly overlooks non-verbal communication, focusing mainly on verbal aspects, affecting both assistive technologies (i.e. technologies which support communication) and general communication technologies like video conferencing. Moreover, present assistive technologies – which are typically bulky form factor devices (e.g. tablets, large computers), can result in both social stigma and block vital non-verbal pathways.

The fellowship will make contributions to human-computer interaction and accessibility research, while also influencing speech and language therapy research and practice. It will reimagine technology-mediated communication for users with communication disabilities, focusing on two populations: people with aphasia and people with developmental language disorders who, together, will serve as exemplar populations to explore how emerging technologies can facilitate diverse communication abilities.

The fellowship will build upon the group's prior successful prior work on embodied form factor assistive technologies (e.g. smartwatches and smart badges), considering how these might be enhanced by emerging technologies such as AI and augmented reality. We will address the inherent technological challenges – e.g. that AI models mostly consider normative, non-impaired communication.