This the presentation of the app Dyseggxia (Piruletras in its Spanish version): A scientifically validated game to help children to overcome dyslexia.

1. by the Cookie Cloud Team
A Scientifically Validated App to Help
Children to Overcome Dyslexia
in Spanish

2. Dyslexia
• Dyslexia is a learning disability characterized by
difficulties with accurate word recognition and by
poor spelling and decoding abilities
!
• As side effect, this impedes the growth of
vocabulary and background knowledge
• Children with dyslexia tend to show signs of
depression and low self-esteem
(Vellutino et al., 2004)
(International
Association of
Dyslexia, 2011)

3. Dyslexia
(Jiménez et al. 2009)
(Paulesu et al. 2001)
(Eurostat, 2012)
(Interagency
Commission on
Learning
Disabilities,
1987)
• Neurological origin
!
• 7.5-11% Spanish speaking
• 50 million in the European
Union
• 10-17.5% of the US population
• Frequent
• Universal
(Shaywitz,
2008)

4. Dyslexia and Education
• Today, the most frequent way to detect
a child with dyslexia is due to her or his
academic failure
• In Europe 15.2% of the students do not
finish the obligatory secondary school
• In Spain 31% of the students drop
secondary school
• In Spain 4 out of 6 cases of academic
failure are related to dyslexia
(International
Dyslexia
Association, 2011)
!
(European
Commission, 2011)
!
(Eurostat, 2011)
!
(Federación
Española de la
Dislexia, 2008)

5. Traditional Methods
for Overcoming Dyslexia
• To mitigate dyslexia, children need to do
language exercises
• Paper based
• Monotonous exercises
• Dyslexia workbooks are boring for children

6. The Idea
• Provide children an interactive and
engaging tool
• Overcome difficulties while playing
exercises created with a new
linguistic based methodology

7. since March 2011

8. Luz Rello
Linguist, PhD
student
on dyslexia
Clara Bayarri
Software Engineer
Content
Design
&
Evaluation
Development
Graphic
Design
The Team
Azuki Gorriz
Graphic Designer
and Illustrator

9. Features
• Exercises in Spanish and English
• More than 5,000 different exercises
• Six types of exercises
• Five difficulty levels: initial, easy, medium, hard
and expert
• Graphics showing the learning evolution
• Engaging elements: points, sounds and
accessories to customize your penguin (app’s pet)

10. New Methodology

11. Scientific Content Design
(Rello,Baeza-
Yates, Saggion
& Pedler, LREC
2012)
(Rello, &
Llisterri, LDW
2012)
(Rello, Bayarri &
Gorriz, ASSETS
2012)
• Creation of a
corpus of texts
written by children
with dyslexia
• Linguistic
analysis of
the errors
• Integration of
the linguistic
patterns in the
exercises

12. Exercise Design
• Phonology
• Orthography
• Morphology
• Lexicon
Empirical
Error
Analysis
+
Difficulties
• Omission
!
!
• Substitution

13. • Insertion
• Derivation • Word Separation
• Transposition

14. Difficulty Levels
• Defined by:
• Specific difficulties of
Dyslexia
• User testing (15 participants)
(Rello, Bayarri &
Gorriz, ASSETS 2013)
• Word length
• Frequency
• Number of neighbors

15. Text Appearance
• Based on
previous
research on
people with
dyslexia using
eye-tracking
(Rello, Kanvinde &
Baeza-Yates, W4A 2012)
(Rello & Baeza-Yates,
ASSETS 2013)
• Best fonts
for dyslexia
!
!
• Good colors
for dyslexia

16. Engaging Children
• The penguin grows and earns prizes
(Rello,
Bayarri, &
Gorriz,
TISE 2013)

17. For Parents & Teachers
• Graphics showing the evolution of the child
(Rello,
Bayarri, &
Gorriz,
TISE 2013)

18. Scientific Evaluation
• Longitudinal study in Lestonnac School,
with psychologists from Creix Centre
• 8 weeks (April-June 2013)
!
• 48 participants
with dyslexia
• From 6 to 11 years old
[Rello et al.,
ASSETS
2014]

19. Methodology
Design within-subjects
Independent measures
Piruletras
Word Search
Dependent
measures
Writing — Rate of Words with Errors
Writing — Rate of Errors per Word
Writing — Rate of Errors per Wrong Word
Reading — Rate of Errors per Word
Subjective Reading and Writing Skills
Procedure It is a contest!
Materials
TALE tests
!
Reading and
Writing Tests
- Test Structure
- Word Content (children’s
school textbooks, app
words)
- Age Groups
[Rello et al.,
ASSETS
2014]

20. Methodology
• Participants
- 54 potential participants
- ‘Test of Reading and Writing Analysis‘
(TALE) to diagnose dyslexia
- 48 participants (29 girls and 19 boys)
- All experienced in playing computer games
- 44 of them regularly played games on
mobile devices
Two Groups
using
TALE
Older children:
16 girls and 8 boys
9 to 11 years old
fourth and fifth year
(µ= 9.92, s = 0.78)
Younger children:
13 girls and 11 boys
6 to 9 years old
first, second and third year
(µ ̄= 7.67, s = 1.00)
[Rello et al.,
ASSETS
2014]

21. Results
Older Group
Younger Group
[Rello et al.,
ASSETS
2014]

22. Conclusions
• It significantly improves the
writing of children with dyslexia
(9 and 11 years old after 4 weeks)
• 42% less writing
errors
• 34% less errors rate
per wrong word
hace = 0 error
ace = 1 error
aze = 2 errors
[Rello et al.,
ASSETS
2014]

23. Social Impact
• 17,000 downloads
(Since June 2012)
• More than 70 countries
• Since September 2013:
— 2,282 downloads
— 310 sold (0.79€)

24. Social Impact
• In the curriculum of specialized centers in Barcelona and Balearic
Islands: Creix, UDITTA, Coddia, among others
• Recommended by associations of dyslexia (Madrid, Barcelona,
Balearic Islands, Galicia, SUMDIS, ForDyslexia, among others)
• On TV, radio and newspapers, blogs & talks

25. Championship!
• First Dyseggxia contest for children
at Mobile World Centre, Barcelona
• Overcome dyslexia & make friends
• Sponsors
• Organizers

26. First Prize in Education Category
• over 200 apps (4 categories)

27. Ongoing Work
• Android and Web version
• Inclusion in schools
• Inclusion reeducation programs
• Extend to more languages
• Include a business manager in our
team
• Include a customer service
representative in our team
• Find funding to become a start-up
• Android beta version
• Ajuntament de Barcelona
(licenses and instruction classes
in schools)
• — German with
Hochschule Emden/Leer
— Catalan with
Calatan Dyslexia
Association

28. Other Possibilities of Dyseggxia
• We discovered that some people is using it to...
!
!
!
!
• We can create books for children and school
materials
• Learning new languages
• Practice spelling
• Mind training for children, adults and elderly
• Learning spelling for low-literate adults

29. Summary
• Fosters equal opportunities
• Improves the outcome
• Empowers teachers and
parents
• Scientifically validated
• Learning while playing, engaging
• More affordable (and complementary) compared to
reeducation classes with a private teacher (0.79€ vs 30€/h)

30. Research Papers
• Rello, Luz; Bayarri, Clara; Otal, Yolanda & Pielot, Martin. A Method to Improve the Spelling of
Children with Dyslexia. ASSETS 2014: The 16th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference of
Computers and Accessibility, Rochester, NY USA, 20-22 October..
• Rello, Luz; Bayarri, Clara & Gorriz, Azuki. 2012. What is Wrong with this Word? Dyseggxia: a
Game for Children with Dyslexia. In Proceedings of the 14th International ACM SIGACCESS
Conference of Computers and Accessibility (ASSETSb 2012). Boulder, USA, 22-24 October.
• Rello, Luz; Clara Bayarri & Azuki Gorriz. 2013. Un juego educativo para niños con dislexia. XIV
Congreso Internacional de Interacción Persona-Ordenador (INTERACCIÓN 2013). September
17-20, 2013, Madrid, Spain.
• Rello, Luz & Llisterri, Joaquim. 2012. There are Phonetic Patterns in Vowel Substitution
Errors in Texts Written by Persons with Dyslexia. In Proceedings of the 21st Annual World
Congress on Learning Disabilities (LDW 2012). Oviedo, Spain, 5-7 September.
• Rello, Luz 2013. Design of Word Exercises for Children with Dyslexia. The 5th International
Conference on Software Development for Enhancing Accessibility and Fighting Info-exclusion
(DSAI 2013). Vigo, Spain, 13-15 November.

31. Research Papers
• Rello, Luz; Clara Bayarri & Azuki Gorriz. 2013. Dyseggxia o Piruletras: Ejercicios Lingüísticos
para la Reeducación de la Dislexia en un Juego para Tableta (Dyseggxia or Piruletras:
Language Exercises for Rehabilitation of Dyslexia in a Game for Tablet) In Proceedings of the
TISE 2013: XVIII Congreso Internacional de Informática Educativa. Porto Alegre, Brasil, 9-11
December, 2013.
• Rello, Luz; Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Horacio Saggion & Jennifer Pedler. 2012. A First Approach to
the Creation of a Spanish Corpus of Dyslexic Texts. In Proceedings of the LREC Workshop
Natural Language Processing for Improving Textual Accessibility (NLP4ITA). Istanbul, Turkey, 27
May, 2012.
• Rello, Luz; Kanvinde, Gaurang & Baeza-Yates, Ricardo. 2012. Layout Guidelines for Web Text
and a Web Service to Improve Accessibility for Dyslexics. In Proceedings of the International
Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A 2012). Lyon, France, 16-17 April.
• Rello, Luz & Baeza-Yates, Ricardo. 2013. Good Fonts for Dyslexia. ASSETS 2013: The 15th
International ACM SIGACCESS Conference of Computers and Accessibility (ASSETSa 2013),
Bellevue, Washington USA, 22-24 October.

32. Thank You!
www.dyseggxia.com
Contact:
luzrello@acm.org