An Exploratory Study on Supporting Persons with Aphasia in Pakistan: Challenges and Opportunities

Since the prevalence of aphasia is one of the major problems faced by older individuals today, there is an increasing amount of research aimed towards developing technology based interventions for persons with aphasia (PwA). In developing countries such as Pakistan, aphasia patients face multiple problems and challenges due to a weak healthcare system and a severe lack of facilities and available resources. This work is an effort to understand the needs, problems and challenges of PwA in order to provide more effective support. In recent years, Virtual Reality (VR) has been the focus of a lot of research, due to its deep immersive environments, and has shown great promise in improving language production and speech comprehension among aphasia patients. This study aims to evaluate the impact of VR enrichment activities on language production and speech comprehension of PwA. It will also explore the opportunities and challenges of using VR experiences with PwA through a thematic analysis of the recorded observations made during the system evaluation.