What began as an engineering student project turned into a real mobile application. The second-year project, formerly known as EasyTalk , has been dubbed Click & Say, a digital tool that helps children with speech and communication.
Céline Carlier, Inès Sabani and Morgane Ragneau are graduates of the ESILV/EMLV joint degree program, class of 2020. To make their student project a reality, the three ESILV engineers came up with an application available on mobile stores from June 2021.
A student project rewarded by the Sopra Steria – Institut de France Foundation
In 2017, during their 2nd year of engineering studies, the three co-founders’ idea was to create a tool that would digitalize the traditional paper-based sign-language communication board.
In 2018, the project won the Coup de Cœur prize of the Sopra Steria-Institut de France Foundation’s Student Prize for its solidarity approach.
“The values supported by the Foundation correspond to those we want to promote with our project: equality, development, new technologies serving mankind, and greater disability awareness,” explained the EasyTalk team at the time.
Click & Say: tech at the service of inclusive communication
“Click & Say” is the result of the venture of three female students driven by the desire to help the families of children with communication problems. On the Click & Say website, Inès, Morgane and Céline, the three ESILV co-founders, explain the origins of this project:
“When Inès brought to light the communication problems faced by families with a mentally disabled child, the urge to harness new technologies for a social issue seemed obvious.”
Her personal experience gave a unique dimension and motivation to carry out this project and bring help to these families by digitizing the standard communication booklet.”
Pictograms, dashboard, interactivity: an alternative & augmented communication method
Click & Say is a real-life companion for children with communication disorders. Through a customizable dashboard, the application lets the child interact instantly with his family and friends in a matter of a few clicks, thanks to numerous pictograms.
Screenshot of the interactive board
These graphics represent daily activities with voice descriptions: several objects, actions, and characters are available to help the child express a desire, a need or an idea.
The Click & Say digital board is inspired by augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems, which offers tools that replace oral language thanks to new technologies, such as AI, voice synthesis systems, eye-tracking, etc.
The idea is to assist children with a broad range of speech and language disorders to communicate in the most effective way possible in all daily situations.
