My Samsung Galaxy A70 received an update last night to the new One UI 2.0 and android 10 updates. While yes ALL updates are exciting this one was amazing and truly shows why Android and Samsung are paving the way in inclusive and assistive technology. After the update I didn’t think much of it but once I started looking around at the update it got me very excited for one specific new feature which will help Youth and Adults with Apraxia and speech disorders!

One of the most frustrating issues I have when dealing with my speech is not sounding how I think I sound when trying to pronounce something I never really know if I am pronouncing it right, I have googled “how to pronounce fill in blanc here” a lot, however that doesn’t fully help due to the fact I don’t always know how I actually sound.

Today I did the something as always, I came across a word I didn’t know how o pronounce. I googled, with my newly updated phone, how to pronounce “comorbid” and found something exciting.

My phone landed on a page showing, as usual, the pronunciation of the word. “Kow-mor-buhd””as always, but there a few new things on this page.

First was a picture of lips, which when you clicked the “hear” button moved to the way the mouth should move when saying the word. Helping me visually see the proper moments of the word. Something I usually only see done in speech therapy.

The second was a “slow” slider, if I click on this slider it slows down the word, AND the lips. So I can watch and hear the sounds more clearly. Which is a BIG help.

Third and last is the best feature if you ask me. A Practice button that records you and gives you feedback. In the case of the word which I was using the feature for at first “Comorbid” it gave me the following feedback. First, it gave me the full break down of what it sounded like coming out of my mouth, for me it sounded like “kd-moow-behd” it also highlights the errors in red, in my case, it looked like this “kd-moow-behd”. You are then able to scroll to see your errors. At kd it told me I pronounced it wrong, the feature even goes a step further and tells me to try and round my lips and drop my jaw a little to make the “o” sound, it also gives me the option to hear the difference between the sound I made and the sound the word should have, in other words, the feature is trying to help me improve my speech movements!

The other errors were similar the messages mentioning that my tongue may not be in the right location. And that I put the wrong emphasis in the “eh” vowel (this is a very common error with Apraxia I know I struggle with).

It is very exciting seeing a cell phone company, a phone being something a lot of people with Apraxia dread, helping out our community by creating assistive devices for us!

After my experience trying this feature with comorbid, I decided to try out some other words. First I choose some words I know I can say and pronounce well. In these cases, the feature congratulated me with a green “good job” and a checkmark. Then I decided to take it a step further and say some words I know I struggle pronouncing, while I won’t give all the feedback I will share the color corrections given so you can see a few more examples of this amazing Samsung feature!

• Bird I sounded like Baard
• Sugar I sounded like Shu-go
• Shirt I sounded like Shourt
• Chair I sounded like Cheiow

As you can see from above this feature is amazing and ever so helpful! Just one more reason why Samsung is leading the way for inclusive and assistive technology for all.

Thank you Samsung!!