Aug 11, 2020
Janet Patterson, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, Chief of the Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology Service at VA Northern California, speaks with Will Evans, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, about Aphasia Games for Health, a project at the intersection of aphasia rehabilitation, adaptation deficit, gaming design, and community connectivity.
Dr. Evans is an assistant professor and aphasia rehabilitation researcher in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Pittsburgh. In 2020 Will was named a Tavistock Trust for Aphasia Distinguished Scholar, USA.
Will is spearheading a new project,
Aphasia Games for Health, which is a collaborative effort
among members of the aphasia community, professional game
designers, and aphasia rehabilitation researchers. Together,
they are seeking to 1) develop therapeutic games to help
people with aphasia to continue to improve and connect long-term,
and 2) help build and empower a broader aphasia games movement by
providing resources for community groups, clinicians, and
professional game designers to make games more aphasia friendly and
accessible.
This summer Will and his team are working on three prototype group
aphasia card games that can be played in person or through group
video chat, and which will be shared with the community for free
through a creative commons license. Once their first prototype
games are developed, they will be looking for people with aphasia
and community groups to do playtesting, which is trying out the
games and providing feedback to the team to improve the
games.
In today’s episode you will learn: