While supporting thousands of 'Speech Sound Pics' (SSP) Approach teachers in Australia to offer personalised 'letters and sounds' learning within the classroom setting, with a focus on reading for meaning, pleasure, and being excited about words, I kept realising that non-speaking children were being overlooked. I was frustrated by how difficult it was for these children to communicate, often limited to what seemed like hundreds of picture symbols or single words memorised by shape—an approach I was trying to get teachers to avoid. This is because it’s much harder for children to learn to read if they don’t have the speech sounds, spelling, and meaning 'glued' together in their orthographic lexicon.
 

As I write in my book, this is called the Speech Sound Mapping Theory. We need children to be able to hear all the sounds in words, even if they can’t produce them, understand their order, and be able to blend them—and even manipulate them—to create new words! I wanted to create something that could represent the speech sounds children couldn’t or chose not to produce, so they could point to these 'Phonemies' (phonemic representations) and use them to build words. This approach reduces cognitive load, making it easier to understand and use spoken and written English to communicate.
 

But I wanted more—and Innovate UK chose to fund the project!
 

Children can now play the words they choose (MyWordz®), by typing in Phonemies (speech sound typing!) and the words appear on the screen and can be voiced—even though the children don’t need to be able to read or spell the words in letters themselves. I know this might sound like a strange concept—almost magical!—but it uses emerging technology to solve problems with English orthography that no one has addressed before. I attribute this to my pattern-seeking AuDHD brain and my love for children. Every child deserves a voice! Speech Sound Typing with MySpeekie® does that!
 

When training parents and teachers, I ask them to tell the person next to them what they like on toast without using words, drawing pictures, or writing it down. I want them to experience what it’s like to be a child who struggles to say words and cannot proficiently draw or write what they mean. We need them to be able to 'say' what they want, without limitations - and use full sentences! We also want them to learn to read and spell as quickly as possible as this is the easiest way to try feel 'heard'.    
 

The following videos show MySpeekie® in action. I can add whatever words children want to be able to type, to then 'say'—just send me a message through the app! My goal is also to build the largest mapped word bank in the world—orthographically mapped words that show the graphemes and their sound values. Can you help? Do you know someone I can support? Please connect!

Miss Emma aka The Neurodivergent Reading Whisperer®
MEd SEN
Creator of MySpeekie® – the world’s first technology that enables children to type speech sounds and produce written words!