Speech Therapy in Your Pocket- 5 iPad Apps for Speech Production

Speech therapy requires therapists to be armed with a variety of materials for promoting speech production. Traditionally, these have been articulation cards, books, mirrors and boundless therapy toys. This makes for a lot of materials to tote around and can ultimately become tiresome. Thankfully, working on speech production has never been easier if you’re outfitted with a mobile device. Not only can you condense materials into one pint-sized tablet, but you can reinvigorate your therapy sessions with new apps and their game-changing technologies. Here are five iPad apps for speech production that you should know about. Each contains high quality graphics and new ways to infuse technology into your speech therapy sessions.

Articulation treatment has never been easier with this app from Little Bee Speech. Developed by a speech language pathologist, Articulation Station provides activities to take a child through the therapy process from the word to sentence and finally story level. Flashcards, matching games, rotating sentences, unique sentences and stories make this sure to fit a variety of children in an SLPs caseload.

Mouthworks

Also created by a speech language pathologist, Mouthworks invites children to practice speech production with inviting characters that provide a visual cue for mouth postures, sounds in isolation and words. A helpful app for articulation to use in apraxia therapy.

This app takes advantage of the iPad’s high-tech features by using voice recognition technology to engage and provide feedback to the user. The premise of the game is that the animal characters have lost their voice, and the user must make the target sounds. Fun feedback and animations for speech production makes this engaging and truly unique. Of note, the recognition software might be accurate but the app’s  disclaimer reads: “Gameplay rewards are based entirely on participation, not accuracy, so the child is constantly getting positive feedback as long as they are trying to make sounds!”.

For clients really needing a visual to enhance their understanding of speech sound productions, try Speech Tutor from PocketSLP. Both front and side views of the face during articulation are provided in quality animations that highlight the tongue, mouth movements and placement. Three video speeds are available  for playback with a pause button available at any time during the clip. What’s also great about this app is that users can record themselves as they practice their target sounds. Then, review them by hitting play before or after the video of the correct production.

 I Can Articulate

A high-quality image library, recording features, data and speech sample collection capabilities make this an excellent app for busy SLPs. Activities for self assessment are included at the word, sentence and story levels. The unique speech sample feature allows SLPs to transcribe a speech sample, select target sounds and positions and have these automatically matched with the app’s dictionary.