INTERACTIVE VIDEODISC FOR TEACHING AND EVALUATING LIPREADING

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INTRODUCTION
In this paper, the ALLAO system (Aide a la
Lecture Labiale Assistee par Ordinateur) is
described. Attention is focused on the
appropriateness of interactive videodisc
technology for the needs of lipreading
acquisition, Lipreading is a natural means of
perception of speech, used in particular by deaf
people. Although they cannot identify the speech
sounds, they can observe and interpretate the
varying shapes of the face and especially of the
lips. These visual informations can be
complemented by the acoustical informations
provided through the hearing aid. Lipreading
proficiency should be improved by training
programs, including those for the hearing impaired
to become familiar with the hearing aid [1].
ALLAO is a system intended for postlingually
hearing impaired adul ts and for the speech
therapists. Its basic goals are : (1) to be an
effective tool for teaching lipreading with or
without a conventional or cochlear-implanted
hearing aid, (2) to be able to evaluate lipreading
skills and the efficiency of the hearing aid for
increasing the lipreading performances of the
subject.



LIPREADING SKILLS ACQUISITION
The exercices use different kind of stimuli
such as nonsense words, numbers, semantically
related words and sentences. Each of these
linguistic groups aims to develop a specific
function such as visual discrimination of phonemes
and syllables, duration perception, lexical
access, and strategies for sentence understanding.


CONCLUDING REMARKS
Tests involving numbers have been conducted
with 50 deaf persons. The results have
demonstrated the influence of parameters such as
the number of syllables and the type of vocalic
nuclei upon lipreading scores. These tests have
indicate a positive role of the hearing aids in
syllabic segmentation.
Systematic word identification tests with
multiparameter evaluation allows the speech
therapist to determine the nature of the
difficulties of each subject and to estimate the
contribution of the hearing aid, The training
program can be thus adapted to the particular
lipreading proficiency of the subject.