WithVR- how a student who has a stutter developed a new way to do therapy

More than 1% of people in the world stutter; and one of them is Gareth Walkom, a 24-year-old student at Nottingham Trent University in the UK. He has been stuttering since the age of six, and it has affected him throughout his life. From the fear of talking to someone that he doesn't know to trying to say his name. correctly and clearly, Gareth knows firsthand how unbearable a stutter can sometimes be, and he wanted to help people like himself to control their stutter.

This led Gareth to build a Virtual World to help people who stutter, and so withVR was born!

This virtual space allows patients to practice their speech, where they can interact with an avatar about everyday things. This is very realistic, animated, and as the conversation flows the patient's gazed behaviors are being monitored and registered. For example, if someone who stutters looks away from the avatar during the moment of a stutter, they will be told this, meaning that the whole purpose of this system is to prepare the individual for anxiety-provoking real-life situations.

Taking into consideration that one of the difficulties in adapting to any disability is the opportunity to work through it in a safe and nonjudgmental environment. this solution provides a virtual space for individuals, in collaboration with their speech therapists, to practice real-world speaking scenarios in safe, controlled environments.

Learn more about this solution here https://withvr.app/
This story was adapted from https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/startups/discover-how-virtual-reali... and https://www.vice.com/en/article/kby5bm/a-young-developer-is-building-a-v...

All the images have been taken from https://withvr.app/treat/, as we do not own any of them.