Multisensory computer-based system for teaching sentence reading in Hindi and Bangla to children with dyslexia

Abstract

Though speaking skills in the mother tongue develop naturally, developing reading skills requires training. Dyslexia is a language-based learning disability that can affect the reading ability in any language. Although many literature is available to address these challenges, the need to teach sentence reading was neglected. This paper addresses problems faced while reading sentences. As computer-based multi-sensory teaching is considered as an effective way to teach children with dyslexia (CwD), the proposed system uses multisensory teaching methods to teach sentence reading in Hindi and Bangla languages. It shows sentences as word packages to teach word sequence and help with comprehension. The platform records the response time of the user to generate a performance report to monitor her performance. For evaluating the system, an expert survey was conducted with 26 special educators in two phases, pre-test and post-test. The questionnaires were prepared following previous literature under the expert’s supervision. The pre-test data helped in understanding the educators’ experience and opinions about assistive technology and the post-test data were used to evaluate the system. In the evaluation, all educators agreed that the system will be very useful for their students and it will give a generalised solution for all the challenges their students face.