From the Maker Faire to a joint project: the story of how we met the CRC center

In the framework of the AI for SEND students project, Sony CSL Language Team met with members of CRC, a high specialisation center in the rehabilitation of developmental disorders located in Rome and with Biancoenero, a high readability publisher located in Rome. The two days meeting was an extraordinary occasion to advance the collaboration between CSL and CRC on the AI for the SEND students project and especially on the ARTIS interface, an adaptive tutoring systems that wants to help students to make sense of written text no matter of their origin or abilities.

The goals of the meeting were:

• presente the different activities 
• define the role of Biancoenero, a publisher of high readability texts located in Rome
• define a roadmap of the experiment to be taken place at CRC 
• advancing on ARTIS Interface and the Italian Model 

Monday 13 April 2022

The first day was held at CSL Rome. After a welcome word by Luciano Pietronero, the president of CREF, Vittorio Loreto gave an overview of CSL two labs, In Paris and in Rome, and of the different activities. Later on, Martina Galletti gave an overview of the different activities of the language team and later she focused on presenting the work that has already been achieved together with the CRC members and, particularly with Eleonora Pasqua, Manuela Calanca, Francesca Bianchi and Diletta Vedovelli.

To conclude the morning’s presentations, Francesca Del Gado, Lecturer at La Sapienza in speech therapy, Operations Director and Key Account of CRC, gave a presentation about the different activities of CRC. These high level presentations ensured that all people involved in the meeting knew about  the different activities and projects. 

The afternoon was dedicated to continue working on the collaboration already started with CRC and on the ARTIS interface. First, Martina Galletti and Eleonora Pasqua presented the work to Biancoenero: they put a particular focus on how it was born and what has been done so far. Secondly, they kept on working on the existing tool together with Biancoenero and the involvement of the publisher was discussed. Particularly, the input texts provided by Biancoenero and the insertion of the high readability font created by Biancoenero was discussed.

Finally, the batteries of tests to be used as first assessment were defined. Moreover, current problems and difficulties were also discussed. 

Tuesday 14 April 2022

The second day was held at CRC. In the morning, different CRC members gave an overview of the different technological tools used by the center for rehabilitation and the different research projects done in the center.

• Scordino Lisa,  Speech Therapist, gave a presentation about the use of Virtual Reality combined with biosensors in the case of autism. In this research experiment a virtual reality sensor, and a wearable sensor that measures significant physiological signals were used together with a TWB platform to measure stress and Phasic EDA signals for Stuttering Children. 
• Alice Turaccio, Speech Therapist, gave a presentation about how Artificial Intelligence, and particularly the social robots developed by LuxAI could be beneficial for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. 
• Maria Chiara Marini and Ludovica Granieri, Speech Therapist, gave later on a presentation on the magic room available at CRC implemented in collaboration with the Politecnico of Milano. The magic room is a smart place for children combining the benefits of interactive technologies and multi-sensory experiences: different and multimodal software and hardware (including projections, audio, smart toys, aroma emitters, bubble machines, lights and Kinet Sensors) are used to make children play a number of games such as association, memory and immersive game. A pilot study on the benefits of this room was done with 14 deaf kids to study how the use of these multimodal sensors could help to get better at their disability. 
• The last three presentations focused on a series of tools and platforms for language and learning disorders. 
  • Francesca Bianchi, Speech Therapist, presented Letssay, an application for rehabilitation of morphosyntactic comprehension of children and Moovy, a board game to facilitate the understanding of clitics and passive clauses. 
  • Diletta Vedovelli, Speech Therapist, presented RIDInet, the first Italian platform for integrated tele-rehabilitation which is self-adaptive and whose area of focus are reading, writing, numeracy, text comprehension, language and executive functions.
  • Alessandro Minutiello, Speech Therapist, presented ASTRAS, a tele-rehabilitation app designed to improve the efficiency of executive function in children.
  • Finally Gaia Di Giamberardino presented the graphics tablet, a tool for early identifying writing difficulties. 

In the afternoon, the working group formed by CRC and CSL members continued working on the existing tool and case study. Particularly, they wrapped up the discussions of the day before, they defined a roadmap for users studies and defined a strategy for communicating about the project to the general public and conferences to target for publications. 

About CRC

CRC is a Center of high specialisation in the rehabilitation of developmental disorders where the quality of the services provided is closely linked to the dimension of welcoming the person. Established in 2002 as the first center operating under a system of accreditation with the National Health System for the treatment of stuttering, over time it employed its resources in the field of Neurodevelopmental Disorders of language and learning, operating under a system of accreditation with the National Health System. The Center employs a staff of over 50 professionals, who, coordinated in multidisciplinary teams, daily make available to our customers’ competence and passion. The Center is engaged in a regular research activity, which supports scientifically the rehabilitation activity, guaranteeing its quality. The progress achieved is disseminated through participation in conferences training courses and publications 

About Biancoenero

Biancoenero is an independent publishing house born in Rome in 2005. It has always worked on the High Readability project, to bring books closer to all children, even those who have reading difficulties. With the collaboration of therapists and experts, Biancoenero has identified precise linguistic and typographical criteria, including the Biancoenero® printing font, which make reading more accessible to all, without sacrificing the quality and style of the narrative.