Aphasia is a language disorder, usually caused by stroke. It affects a substantial number of people; there are about 250,000 people living with aphasia in the UK and approximately 45,000 new cases each year. People with aphasia have difficulty with all aspects of communication: speaking, reading and writing. The negative effects of aphasia can be immense and are not confined to the affected person but are also felt by the immediate family and social circle.One approach advocated by therapists is for the aphasic person to communicate using gestures, but this also poses challenges as the ability to produce and understand gestures may be impaired. In recent research we have investigated whether gesture production can be enhanced by therapy and the initial evidence from face-to-face therapy is encouraging. However gesture therapy is resource-intensive and this has motivated our proposal.Our goal is to develop and pilot an innovative gesture training tool to be used in aphasia therapy at home. This will build on our existing work on non-computer based therapy and there is no previous published research in this area. Our approach to achieving this goal will be to refine and adapt existing gesture recognition technology, incorporating it within a training package that we will develop. In so doing, we will refine and exploit existing research into gesture recognition and gesture-based interaction, utilising mainstream interaction devices such as the Nintendo Wii remote and open source software. We will investigate appropriate forms of gesture recognition and feedback for this user community.The development of the tool will address several fundamental issues: it needs to recognise a substantial set of gestures that are relevant to the aphasic user and can be trained by the therapist; it must not be over-sensitive as gesture production is likely to be variable and inaccurate; we need to understand and incorporate appropriate forms of training and feedback in the tool.Research in the wild is integral to this proposal. Close engagement with the user community will be facilitated by our project partner, the Stroke Association. Aphasic people will be employed as consultants in exploring and evaluating gesture recognition technologies as the design and development of the therapy tool progresses. In the later stages of the project, a pilot study will be conducted with 10 people who have severe aphasia to investigate the therapeutic efficacy of the tool as well as its broader acceptability.The potential transformational impact of using gesture-recognition technology in therapy is significant. Given the numbers of people affected by aphasia, the provision of a therapeutically effective, low-cost, gesture training tool would be of substantial benefit.

Digital content is transforming our cultural, social, academic and business lives. Yet not everyone can readily access digital content. The 2.2 million people in the UK who live with a communication impairment face specific challenges. This includes people with aphasia, a language disorder most commonly caused by a stroke. Aphasia can affect people's ability to speak, to understand speech, to read and to write. In severe cases, people may be able to speak only a few words or may have very limited ability to read and write. The Stroke Association estimates that 350,000 people in the UK are living with the devastating consequences of aphasia. However this community lacks visibility. A strong digital presence could enhance visibility, but people with aphasia do not have a strong digital presence. They are not evident as digital content creators and curators. They struggle with digital content, especially textual content, and with the accessibility of current tools for content creation and consumption. Engaging with digital content involves the creation, dissemination and refashioning of rich digital resources for consumption by others over extended periods of time. No previous work has investigated customised digital tools to enable people with aphasia to participate in content creation and curation in this sense of creating digital artefacts for consumption by others. This is the problem driver for the INCA project. The overall objective of INCA is to investigate, co-design and trial digital content tools for people with aphasia. The research will focus on two broad groups of users: people who have significant language impairments as a consequence of their aphasia and people who have milder aphasia and therefore less severe language deficits. The research will explore a blended approach to digital content, intertwining the digital and physical worlds. Project partners, the Stroke Association and Dyscover, will host community projects in which the prototype tools are used to create and curate digital content with support from a visual artist; this work will be showcased at the end of the project. The research approach will emphasise co-creation. Users will participate through co-design workshops. As many co-design techniques are themselves not accessible to people with language impairments, INCA will also deliver co-design techniques for this community. Finally, the research will provide interaction and content design guidelines for "language-light" digital experiences; these will address the specific challenges of content creation.

Chronic health conditions are those that a person has over an extended period of time, or for life. The sufferer and their family have to learn to live with the illness and its consequences. The UK government is concerned about the extent of chronic ill health and the cost of providing quality services to all who need them. This has led to a major rethink. As a result, there are a number of new requirements for health and social services. These include recognising the expert knowledge that the person with a long term (or chronic) condition has developed over time and introducing ways to help them to manage their symptoms. Professionals are being asked to work in partnership with people with long term conditions, so that the individual is in control of their treatment and care plan and what happens as a result. More and more of us are using technologies in our everyday lives. This four year project will look at how technologies can be used to help individuals and their families to manage the consequences of long tem conditions and maintain quality of life, supported by professionals. It will involve:- 1.Identifying the technologies that are capable of providing relevant information to users with long term conditions so that they can be helped to achieve realistic life goals, agreed through their therapy plan2.Working with users and health care staff to test which are the best technologies for this purpose, how devices can be most appropriately used and what the best forms of information feedback are.For this project, we have decided to focus upon three very different conditions. The first is stroke. People who have a stroke were often fit and well beforehand. Stroke can leave the person suddenly physically disabled. Treatment and rehabilitation can continue for a long time to help recover mobility and ability to communicate. The second condition is chronic pain. This is a symptom of many long term illnesses and leads to very poor quality of life for sufferers. The third is heart failure. People with heart failure are restricted in what they can do and often have to go into hospital if their condition suddenly gets worse.We have chosen these conditions because the technology we develop will have to be capable of meeting differing needs. The last phase of our project will involve asking people from each of these user groups to test the technology in their own homes so that we can find out the extent to which it is helpful in assisting them to make necessary changes to their behaviour. An example of how the technology might be introduced to a person following stroke is as follows; Following discharge from hospital a community therapist visits the person in their home. The therapist undertakes a full assessment of need. They then log onto the home based computer and customise a programme of activity to meet the needs of the user using the 'stroke toolkit' element of the system, The person and the therapist then look at the library of life goals on the system and agree which the user would like to achieve or maintain over the next few months e.g. they may wish to be able to go to their allotment, to church or simply be able to get up from their bed to the bathroom during the night without falling over. The therapist then shows them how to wear a small sensing device which will record over time the amount or type of activity they are doing (walking, sitting, standing) and the quality of the activity they undertake. Once the user has practiced the programme of activity with exercises, understands how to score the achievement of their agreed goals and can attach the small sensors they will be left to manage their own individualised therapy plan. They are able to obtain feedback on progress through their computer and through email messages sent by the therapist who will be monitoring the user's progress from their place of work.

Chronic health conditions are those that a person has over an extended period of time, or for life. The sufferer and their family have to learn to live with the illness and its consequences. The UK government is concerned about the extent of chronic ill health and the cost of providing quality services to all who need them. This has led to a major rethink. As a result, there are a number of new requirements for health and social services. These include recognising the expert knowledge that the person with a long term (or chronic) condition has developed over time and introducing ways to help them to manage their symptoms. Professionals are being asked to work in partnership with people with long term conditions, so that the individual is in control of their treatment and care plan and what happens as a result. More and more of us are using technologies in our everyday lives. This four year project will look at how technologies can be used to help individuals and their families to manage the consequences of long tem conditions and maintain quality of life, supported by professionals. It will involve:- 1.Identifying the technologies that are capable of providing relevant information to users with long term conditions so that they can be helped to achieve realistic life goals, agreed through their therapy plan2.Working with users and health care staff to test which are the best technologies for this purpose, how devices can be most appropriately used and what the best forms of information feedback are.For this project, we have decided to focus upon three very different conditions. The first is stroke. People who have a stroke were often fit and well beforehand. Stroke can leave the person suddenly physically disabled. Treatment and rehabilitation can continue for a long time to help recover mobility and ability to communicate. The second condition is chronic pain. This is a symptom of many long term illnesses and leads to very poor quality of life for sufferers. The third is heart failure. People with heart failure are restricted in what they can do and often have to go into hospital if their condition suddenly gets worse.We have chosen these conditions because the technology we develop will have to be capable of meeting differing needs. The last phase of our project will involve asking people from each of these user groups to test the technology in their own homes so that we can find out the extent to which it is helpful in assisting them to make necessary changes to their behaviour. An example of how the technology might be introduced to a person following stroke is as follows; Following discharge from hospital a community therapist visits the person in their home. The therapist undertakes a full assessment of need. They then log onto the home based computer and customise a programme of activity to meet the needs of the user using the 'stroke toolkit' element of the system, The person and the therapist then look at the library of life goals on the system and agree which the user would like to achieve or maintain over the next few months e.g. they may wish to be able to go to their allotment, to church or simply be able to get up from their bed to the bathroom during the night without falling over. The therapist then shows them how to wear a small sensing device which will record over time the amount or type of activity they are doing (walking, sitting, standing) and the quality of the activity they undertake. Once the user has practiced the programme of activity with exercises, understands how to score the achievement of their agreed goals and can attach the small sensors they will be left to manage their own individualised therapy plan. They are able to obtain feedback on progress through their computer and through email messages sent by the therapist who will be monitoring the user's progress from their place of work.

Chronic health conditions are those that a person has over an extended period of time, or for life. The sufferer and their family have to learn to live with the illness and its consequences. The UK government is concerned about the extent of chronic ill health and the cost of providing quality services to all who need them. This has led to a major rethink. As a result, there are a number of new requirements for health and social services. These include recognising the expert knowledge that the person with a long term (or chronic) condition has developed over time and introducing ways to help them to manage their symptoms. Professionals are being asked to work in partnership with people with long term conditions, so that the individual is in control of their treatment and care plan and what happens as a result. More and more of us are using technologies in our everyday lives. This four year project will look at how technologies can be used to help individuals and their families to manage the consequences of long tem conditions and maintain quality of life, supported by professionals. It will involve:- 1.Identifying the technologies that are capable of providing relevant information to users with long term conditions so that they can be helped to achieve realistic life goals, agreed through their therapy plan2.Working with users and health care staff to test which are the best technologies for this purpose, how devices can be most appropriately used and what the best forms of information feedback are.For this project, we have decided to focus upon three very different conditions. The first is stroke. People who have a stroke were often fit and well beforehand. Stroke can leave the person suddenly physically disabled. Treatment and rehabilitation can continue for a long time to help recover mobility and ability to communicate. The second condition is chronic pain. This is a symptom of many long term illnesses and leads to very poor quality of life for sufferers. The third is heart failure. People with heart failure are restricted in what they can do and often have to go into hospital if their condition suddenly gets worse.We have chosen these conditions because the technology we develop will have to be capable of meeting differing needs. The last phase of our project will involve asking people from each of these user groups to test the technology in their own homes so that we can find out the extent to which it is helpful in assisting them to make necessary changes to their behaviour. An example of how the technology might be introduced to a person following stroke is as follows; Following discharge from hospital a community therapist visits the person in their home. The therapist undertakes a full assessment of need. They then log onto the home based computer and customise a programme of activity to meet the needs of the user using the 'stroke toolkit' element of the system, The person and the therapist then look at the library of life goals on the system and agree which the user would like to achieve or maintain over the next few months e.g. they may wish to be able to go to their allotment, to church or simply be able to get up from their bed to the bathroom during the night without falling over. The therapist then shows them how to wear a small sensing device which will record over time the amount or type of activity they are doing (walking, sitting, standing) and the quality of the activity they undertake. Once the user has practiced the programme of activity with exercises, understands how to score the achievement of their agreed goals and can attach the small sensors they will be left to manage their own individualised therapy plan. They are able to obtain feedback on progress through their computer and through email messages sent by the therapist who will be monitoring the user's progress from their place of work.