Even with proper training, up to one-third of children never truly master the skill of handwriting. In some cases, their difficulties are associated with severe cognitive deficiencies. In others, they may be due to temporary external factors such as anxiety or stress. In either case, difficulty with the motor process of writing may affect a child’s entire life, as it undermines performance and self-confidence in a wide variety of school activities.
Originally born from the Co-Writer research project, Dynamilis deploys powerful algorithms within an application allowing a deep, fast and multimodal analysis of handwriting as well as a remediation adapted to the specific handwriting problems detected. The main advantage of this tablet-based system is that it captures the dynamic features of writing, such as velocity, acceleration, pressure and pen tilt – something a human expert is unable to do to. From this analysis, the application enables the early detection of handwriting difficulties from its light to severe forms including dysgraphia.
In function of the handwriting difficulties detected (e.g. problems with pressure, shakiness, control of speed, …), the application is able to suggest remediation activities tailored to the writer’s need. Tegami also offers the possibility to monitor/analyse the handwriting progress of children thanks to its monitoring dashboard.
With this project, we work with children with handwriting difficulties in primary schools, with teachers, therapists and parents.
Analysis and Remediation of Handwriting difficulties
Lausanne, EPFL, 2020.Automated human-level diagnosis of dysgraphia using a consumer tablet
npj Digital Medicine. 2018-08-31. Vol. 1, p. 42. DOI : 10.1038/s41746-018-0049-x.Bringing letters to life: handwriting with haptic-enabled tangible robots
2018. IDC ’18 Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on Interaction Design and Children, Trondheim, Norway, June 19 – 22, 2018. p. 219-230. DOI : 10.1145/3202185.3202747.