The problem

NinjaGame aims to help the roughly 7,000 children born each year in the U.S. with cleft lip and/or palate. Even after initial surgical repair as infants, their speech can sound “hypernasal”, meaning that speech sounds come through the nose when they should be coming out of the mouth. This makes it difficult for them to be understood, which has been shown to lead to negative attention, poor self-perception, depression, and anxiety.

Some children with cleft palate can learn to retrain their speech to speak clearly, but the retraining is difficult. It can be hard for these children to tell whether their speech is hypernasal since there are no visual cues -- for instance, the words “mom” and “bob” look exactly the same, but in one the sound comes through the nose. The technology currently available to provide feedback about hypernasality is limited to research and specialized clinics and the few tools available are quite boring. However, we know that frequent practice is key to motor retraining, which means that to be effective, kids need to be able to use the tools at home and they need to be FUN!

The solution

Over the last year, we have developed a new system that addresses both of these issues, but we need your help to get it into the hands of the kids who need it. With funding from the Boston Noonan foundation, we have developed an open-source videogame that kids can play by changing their level of hypernasality, which we call NinjaGame. We use inexpensive, portable, and easily fitted sensors that can give kids instant feedback about how nasal their speech is. We’ve paired this equipment with a videogame to encourage kids to practice, practice, practice! Children role-play as ninjas who must fight evil robots by saying “code words” as clearly as possible.

Why we need you

We have recently tested the feasibility of NinjaGame in 13 kids, including 3 who had hypernasality and all of them enjoyed playing the game! The next critical step is to send this technology home with the children who need it, to see whether home therapy improves their speech. Although the game software we have developed is free, it requires equipment to play at home. That’s where you come in! We need your help to purchase sets of the equipment to measure hypernasality for these children so that they can use NinjaGame at home. Pairing this advanced technology with a videogame may be the key to improved rehabilitation and better speech function in kids with cleft palate.

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