Samsung Develops An Emoji Chat App Designed To Aid Users With Language Disorders

Much has been said about how emoji have appeared to have invaded our world (or the fact that mobile users still can’t get enough of them). Indeed, the use of emoji is so common now that it would be difficult for anyone to read a message or chat conversation that does not contain any emoji. But while it is true that emoji are popular in this day and age, they are not used primarily by people to communicate to each other, but more like tools to express or symbolize a feeling or thought in a cute way.

For certain people, however, especially those dealing with language disorders like aphasia, using emoji might be the only way they can effectively communicate with others. For those not familiar with aphasia, it is a condition that makes it difficult for those affected to read, talk, or even write. 

This is where emoji can play a role, and Samsung might help immensely, too. Samsung’s Italian subsidiary (Samsung Electronics Italia) has developed a new mobile app called Wemogee, and basically it aids those with language disorders to communicate with the use of emoji, or more accurately, messages made out of emoji.

To pull this off, Samsung actually joined forces with Francesca Polini, a noted speech therapist based in Italy. Their collaboration made way for over 140 sentence units to be translated from text format into emoji strings, which refer to sequences of emojis that effectively express the meaning of the sentences. For instance, the common “How are you?” greeting can be translated to emoji speak as a sequence consisting of a smiley face, an OK hand symbol, and a question mark. 

The Wemogee mobile app comes in a couple of modes -- visual and textual -- and users are free to select which modes they are more comfortable with. In visual mode, when users transmit an emoji based message, the recipient of that message will get it either in the form of an emoji sequence (if they are using visual mode, too), or as a text message (if they are using textual mode). In reverse, those using textual mode will be able to send text messages that are translated automatically into emoji sequences (for users who use visual mode). 

For convenience, the Wemogee mobile app has sorted its pre-translated messages into half a dozen macro-categories, which include emergency, food, and of course, emotions. It goes without saying that with just 140 sentences for now, users will not be able to facilitate far more complex chat conversations (for example, explaining a scientific process may be trickier to pull off because of the technical terms involved). But those 140 sentences do help a lot in conveying basic sentences and expressions, which for those affected aphasia means a lot.