[Short Scientific Mission of COST Action LUDI TD1309: Play for Children with Disabilities (LUDI) 2015]
In November 2015, Andri Ioannou, Assistant professor in the Department of Multimedia and Graphic Arts at the Cyprus University of Technology (CUT) and co-director of the Cyprus Interaction Lab, Anna Andreeva, Assistant professor in the Department of Logopaedics at the South West University Neofit Rilski (Bulgaria), and Yiota Polycarpou, intern at the Cyprus Interaction Lab (CUT) visited the School of Deaf in Nicosia in an attempt to explore the possibility of using NAO with hearing impaired children. Further explorations followed with hearing impaired children from mainstream schools in Limassol.
This work is supported by the Short Scientific Mission program of the “Cost Action No TD1309: Play for Children with Disabilities” for which Professor Panayiotis Zaphiris, Dean of School of Fine and Applied Arts of CUT is the Cyprus representative.
Anna’s expertise as a speech pathologist, joined with the expertise of the Cyprus Interaction Lab in Instructional Technology, Educational Robotics and Human Computer Interaction enabled the design, development and pilot testing of a series of applications that enable hearing impaired children to play and have fun with NAO.
During the pilot testing, a total of 14 hearing impaired children interacted with NAO in games such as:
· Dance with NAO
· Work out with NAO
· Tell the shapes and colors to NAO
· Recognize NAO’s emotions
· Shopping with NAO
· Cooking with NAO
We look forward to reporting our preliminary, yet encouraging, findings and results in the next few months.