Phonological Awareness Software for Dyslexic Children

The improvement in the ability to process sounds in oral language (phonological awareness) through the contribution of Information and CommunicationTechnologies (ICT) is reported by many researchers. However, deficits in phonological awareness may persist despite intervention. There is increasing research interest on how educational technology may assist the development of this critical ability. In this article we present the ‘Phonological Awareness Educational Software’ (PHAES) which is a hypermedia application for helping dyslexic readers, using phonological awareness training. Τhe PHAES learning activities use the small units of language (phoneme/grapheme) presented alone, at the word and sentence level, both in spoken and written format. This work was based on the theoretical conceptualization of children’s reading difficulties originating in the phonological domain and aimed to develop a useful tool to assist teaching efforts in helping dyslexic readers. The empirical results show that PHAES is a user friendly educational application and has the potential to set an example for future research in the area.