Best apps for dysarthria, for adults and for children

What an app can do for dysarthria

Dysarthria therapy works on the physical system: breath support, loudness, rate, precision of the movements, and how clearly each sound is made. Much of it is drill, which is the part an app is good at: a target, a model, a repetition count, a record. What an app cannot do is assess which type of dysarthria this is, decide whether the goal is louder or slower or clearer, or notice that the swallow is affected too. That is the speech-language pathologist's job, and for adults after a stroke it usually also involves a physician.

One thing worth knowing before buying anything with speech recognition in it: automatic recognisers are trained on typical speech and score dysarthric speech harshly. A low score is often the recogniser, not the person. Use those scores for trend across weeks, never for a single attempt.

For adults: the comparison

Constant Therapy: the full home programme

Constant Therapy is the closest thing to a therapy programme in an app. It assesses, then serves exercises that adjust to performance, across speech, language and cognition, and it reports progress back to a clinician if one is involved. The app lists aphasia, dementia, stroke and TBI as its targets, and dysarthria drill sits inside the speech categories rather than being the headline. Rated 4.5 from over 4,000 US ratings, on iPhone, iPad and Android.

Cost: $29.99 a month for patients after a 14-day free trial, with a 30-day money-back guarantee, and HSA or FSA funds can be used in the US. The clinician app is free. The limit: the subscription adds up over a long recovery, and its exercise design is broader than dysarthria; a person who only needs speech-motor drill is paying for a lot they will not use.

Speech FlipBook: cheap, focused drill

Tactus Therapy's flip-book app builds syllables and words by flipping the first sound, the vowel and the last sound independently, with a spoken model and slow-motion video for each. It is the drill an SLP might otherwise print on card, and it is $19.99 once, no subscription. Rated 4.6 from 71 US ratings. The limit: it does not listen or score, and it is an iPad and iPhone app only.

SmallTalk: free, useful, and unmaintained

Lingraphica's SmallTalk family is free. Oral Motor Exercises is a set of videos of tongue, lip and jaw exercises to copy, and Phonemes is a video of each English sound being produced, both of which are exactly what a dysarthria programme uses. The caveat: both were last updated in 2021, both are iPad-only, and the ratings are low mostly because of age. They still run today. Download them while they are there, and do not build a recovery around them.

For children: what fits and what does not

Dysarthria in children, most often from cerebral palsy, is usually managed by an SLP alongside the wider team, and the home work is similar to adult work: breath, loudness, rate and clear word-level production. The apps above were built for adults and it shows; the vocabulary and presentation are wrong for a six-year-old.

Help Me Talk, which we make, is a children's speech practice app: 30 guided sound lessons with recorded models and mouth-position tips, over 6,000 words, phrases and sentences dealt out so the child sees new material, and the app listens to each attempt and scores it, with progress per sound across weeks. It is $6.99 a month or $39.99 a year with a 3-day trial, on iPhone, iPad and Android. The honest limits for dysarthria: the score is speech recognition, which will under-score a child with dysarthria, so treat it as trend rather than truth; there is no loudness or rate work, which is often the priority in dysarthria; and scoring needs a connection. Use it for the precision-and-repetition part of the programme, with the SLP's targets.

Articulation Station Hive ($83.99 a year, Apple-only) is the app most paediatric SLPs use for word-level drill, with the adult judging each attempt, and its level ladder suits a child working up from single words. Speech Blubs is less useful here; its strength is imitation for toddlers building first words.

When AAC is the better answer

If dysarthria makes speech hard to understand most of the time, adult or child, the priority is communication now, and that means AAC rather than drill. Text-based apps suit adults who can type (Spoken, Proloquo4Text), symbol-based systems suit children (Proloquo2Go, TD Snap, Grid, Avaz). Using AAC does not stop someone working on speech; the evidence runs the other way. An SLP should choose the system. Proloquo2Go vs LetMeTalk and the others has current prices and trials.

How to practise at home, whichever app you use

1. 1Get the goal from the SLP. Louder, slower, clearer and more breath are different programmes. Apps default to “clearer”; that may not be your priority.
2. 2Short, daily, and seated upright. Ten to fifteen minutes, most days. Posture affects breath, and breath affects everything.
3. 3Over-articulate on purpose. Exaggerated mouth movements at a slow rate are the standard dysarthria technique, and a mirror helps more than any screen.
4. 4Record a sentence weekly on your phone. Played back a month later, it shows change that daily practice hides.
5. 5Ignore single scores. If the app scores, watch the weekly trend and nothing shorter.