SYS.PROJECTS
Aphasia Coach
Open-source AI speech therapy platform for aphasia recovery. Personalized exercises by aphasia type, real-time pronunciation feedback, and progress tracking.
The Problem
This one is more personal than most of my projects. A family member recovering from surgery had mild aphasia, and the existing practice apps were not working.
Aphasia affects the ability to speak, understand, read, or write. Their speech therapist recommended daily practice, but the apps were too generic, full of unfamiliar words that caused more frustration than progress, and not personalized enough to feel relevant. So I built Aphasia Coach.
What It Does
Aphasia Coach uses AI to personalize each practice session to the individual: their vocabulary, their recovery stage, their aphasia type.
Instead of drilling words someone has never heard, users practice with language that is actually familiar to them. Exercises use evidence-based spaced repetition to reinforce words at the right intervals, and the whole thing is free to start with no paywall blocking the first session.
Why Voice-First Matters
Most language apps are built around reading and typing, which is the wrong modality for aphasia recovery. The goal is verbal communication, not spelling.
Aphasia Coach centers practice on speech using text-to-speech and speech-to-text, so sessions stay verbal rather than click-based. That makes exercises more representative of real-world communication and far less frustrating for people who find visual and text tasks harder after a brain injury.
Open Source
The code is open source because I wanted other people to build on it, from new exercise types to other languages to new modalities.
Speech therapy tooling is thin and expensive, and keeping this open lowers the barrier for anyone trying to improve it. Nothing about a recovery tool should sit behind a wall.
What's Next
The obvious next direction is image generation for visual association practice, which could make exercises more effective for certain aphasia types.
Connecting a word to a picture helps recall for some people. I wrote about the motivation behind the project in the Aphasia Coach post. It shares the personalization-first, AI-for-wellbeing approach behind NeuroNav: Sam, my ADHD assistant.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
What is Aphasia Coach?
Aphasia Coach is a free, open-source AI-powered speech therapy platform for aphasia recovery. It delivers personalized exercises adapted to the user's aphasia type and recovery stage, with real-time pronunciation feedback, progress tracking, and evidence-based spaced repetition.
Is Aphasia Coach free?
Yes. Aphasia Coach is free to use and open source, built to make high-quality speech therapy practice accessible to everyone.
What makes Aphasia Coach different from other speech therapy apps?
Aphasia Coach uses AI to personalize exercises to each user's vocabulary and recovery stage, centers practice on speech rather than reading and clicking, and applies evidence-based spaced repetition scheduling, making it more relevant and less frustrating than generic apps.
