“Difficult but Good”: enjoying accessible digital creativity

ABSTRACT

Background

Digital technology is increasingly researched in aphasia rehabilitation but mostly to replicate conventional speech and language therapies. While creative activities are employed in therapy for aphasia, these are not achieved through digital technology and little is known about the impact of digital creativity on people with aphasia.

Aim

To explore how people with aphasia use and experience non-therapeutic creative digital technologies.

Methods & Procedures

We facilitated a series of six community-based workshops for people with aphasia to explore four novel digital creative technologies. Following completion of the workshop series, nine participants were interviewed about their experience of taking part and of engaging with the creative technologies. Interview data were transcribed and analysed using the Framework Method.

Outcomes & Results

Analysis identified two overarching themes addressing creative and technological capability and conceptions of success. Results indicate that creative and accessible digital technologies, presented within the context of a safe, facilitatory social space, fostered experiences of capability and positive challenge for participants.

Conclusions

Engagement with creative and accessible digital technologies for the sake of engagement alone may offer new therapeutic and recreational opportunities for people with aphasia. Results indicate the potential for such activities, when undertaken within a supportive group context, to spark not only enjoyment and stimulation but also to illuminate and underscore capability.

KEYWORDS:

• aphasia
• technology
• digital creativity
• qualitative study

Acknowledgements

We want to thank all the participants who gamely took part in this study. We also thank all those who contributed to the development and design of the four technologies – with particular thanks to co-design team colleagues with aphasia and our collaborator in the design of Comic Spin, Carla Tamburro. Thank you to INCA advisory committee members Cat Andrew, Brian Grellmann, Faustina Hwang, Garry Jopling, Tess Lancashire, Ernesto Priego and Rosemary Townsend and to all of our collaborators at Dyscover and the Stroke Association. Thank you too, to the speech and language therapy students from City, University of London who generously supported the transcription of interview data.

Disclosure Statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Notes

1 https://blogs.city.ac.uk/inca/

2 An online exhibition has since taken place, subsequent to these interviews.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the EPSRC under Grant EP/P025587/1 - Inclusive Digital Content for People with Aphasia (INCA): https://gow.epsrc.ukri.org/NGBOViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/P025587/1 Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council;