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Board with indented letter and ball

eloQuaint, Empowering Children with Dysgraphia to Express Themselves

Inspiration

The idea for eloQuaint was born from a simple yet profound realization: millions of children struggle with dysgraphia, a learning disability that makes writing an uphill battle.

Dysgraphia is a neurological condition where individuals with the condition find it difficult to translate their thoughts into written language. These challenges stem from difficulties in motor coordination, letter formation, and the cognitive overload of organizing and spelling words. As a result, writing becomes a frustrating and labor-intensive task which results in illegible handwriting.

Problem Statement

How might we create tools and techniques to support students with dysgraphia in translating their thoughts and improving their handwriting ?

What it does

eloQUAINT provides a system that simplifies the writing process for individuals with dysgraphia by eliminating the cognitive and motor struggles associated with writing. This enables children to practice their handwriting while reducing the frustration often associated with traditional methods. The app is intuitive, customizable, and designed to make learning inclusive and the prototype complements it.

1. A website that converts spoken words directly into a traceable, double-lined pdf format: Bypasses the initial challenge of organizing and spelling out their words manually

2. Tracing the words on hard/softcopy: Improves motor skills and muscle memory for letter formation

3. Board with indented letters and ball: It helps them understand the proper form and flow of writing

How we built it

Speech-to-Text Conversion: Leveraged on OpenAI's Whisper model. We implemented real-time and accurate transcription of audio into text.
Handwriting Practice PDF Generation: Using ReportLab, we transformed the transcribed text into a traceable PDF. Special dotted fonts were incorporated to guide the handwriting practice.
User Authentication: We developed a secure user authentication system using Flask and SQLite, enabling users to create accounts and sign in.
Responsive Web Design: The front-end was built with HTML, CSS and Javascript, creating a clean and responsive user interface.
Accessibility and Inclusivity: The design incorporated features such as large, readable fonts and a simple layout to ensure accessibility for all users, especially children and those with learning disabilities.

Challenges we ran into

Trying to understand the disability from the perspective of those experiencing it to ensure that our solution empathizes with their needs in the right way.
Dynamic PDF layout; ensuring the text alignment and wrapping within the constraints of double-lined tracing sheets was technically demanding. We iterated multiple times to eliminate the text overflow and improve formatting.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

In the span of two short days, we managed to create a software and hardware component for this problem statement. We developed a web app that is integrated with a database to save past transcriptions of users. After transcription, the user can practise writing on paper or digitally to improve their handwriting. We also 3D-printed a prototype to provide guidance on the steps to write letters for children.

What we learned

Although there might be existing solutions, they might not necessarily be accessible for all.
Understand the subtle differences between similar conditions such as dyslexia and dysgraphia and accurately pinpointing the support needed for each type of disability.
Integrating Whisper AI to achieve high-accuracy transcription.