CENTRE WELLINGTON – After a stroke left its founder with communication difficulties, a local software developer is looking to help those facing the same issues through a speech and language therapy app.
Belwood resident Ewan Crawford was cutting his grass on a June day in 2020 when his life would drastically change.
Ewan suffered an ischemic stroke and wasn’t found for a few hours before being brought to Guelph General Hospital. The stroke led to Ewan having global aphasia and apraxia, communication disorders that make it difficult to speak and comprehend words.
He has been documenting his recovery on a blog to share his “tricks of the trade” of how to do tasks while living with difficulties after a stroke for others going through the same thing. His latest way of helping others going through what he has comes in the form of an app.
NeoTerra Systems, a software development company Ewan founded in 2004, developed the Speech and Language Therapy app, called SALT, to help those experiencing similar issues to better communicate their needs.
Ewan and his daughter Siobhan Crawford, who also works for NeoTerra Systems, explained in a joint interview existing apps recommended to assist him with communication while he was going through speech therapy.
“He just wasn’t finding them very user-friendly, they were very complicated,” Siobhan said.
From that, their goal was to develop an app that is much easier to use to allow for freedom of communication for anyone with these difficulties beyond just those with aphasia. The result of that is the SALT app, which stands for speech and language therapy, releasing to the general public in March.
“It’s much simpler and easy to set-up,” Ewan said.
“We’ve got a full library of words available that can be imported,” Siobhan added.
As an example, Siobhan said trips out to places like the pharmacy can be difficult for people like her dad.
“If he has complicated prescription names to say or you know, he has a set of goals that he needs to get done in that store, it’s very difficult for him on the fly to say ‘okay, this is what I need,’ especially when there’s a lot going on and there’s people talking to him,” Siobhan said.
“This app kind of helps him lay it out, it can speak it out if he needs it to if he’s having trouble speaking it.”
Ewan recently put the app to use for the first time at a Fergus pharmacy and documented it on video to show how it works.
Siobhan added her dad would use the app a bit differently than someone who is in the earlier stages of recovering from a stroke as he’s able to plan his trips and potential conversations out.
However, Ewan explained he could hardly speak about a year-and-a-half ago and struggled to communicate his needs.
“If our app was available, it would have been better on the fly for him to sit there and have a conversation and say ‘I need the bathroom,’” Siobhan said. “He could go into the app and say I need this, whereas he wouldn’t be able to speak it.”
Ewan confirmed the app would have helped him a lot earlier on but is glad to be able to help others who have or will experience what he has.
“I want to give back as part of recovery myself,” Ewan said.
“He’s a very busy person and can’t sit still,” Siobhan said before both father and daughter broke out in laughter.
NeoTerra Systems is also working on a therapy portion of the app to allow for some speech therapy to be done at home.
The SALT app will be released on Google Play and the Apple Store in March.
Learn more about it here.
