Wemogee is Samsung’s new emoji-based app for people with aphasia

Created by Samsung Electronics Italia, Wemogee is designed specifically to help people with aphasia by replacing texts with a series of emojis.

Emojis may be one of the most underrated inventions of the modern world. We see them everywhere, and some criticize them for playing a role in dumbing us down. Yet, not only do they help us convey nuanced feelings in non-verbal conversations like texting, but they’ve also been extremely useful in identifying vulnerable children and domestic violence victims and helping them communicate abuse. In other words, emojis have transformed the way we interact with one another.

Wemogee is a new app developed by Samsung Electronics Italia and Francesca Polini, a speech therapist, which takes that even further, providing an easy and effective way for people suffering from aphasia to communicate with others.. The app supports English and Italian, and although Samsung says it will be released for Android on April 28, it seems to be available already from the Play Store.

There are two modes in this app: visual and textual. The person with aphasia would see emojis, which can be arranged to convey more than 140 phrases placed under six categories. The message would then be translated into words for non-aphasic users, and their responses would be translated back into emojis. The developers behind the app claim that Wemogee is the “first emoji-based chat application designed to enable people with aphasia to communicate” and explain that aphasic patients are able to understand emojis because “they depict all aspects of emotions.”

Aphasia is a communication disorder that often results from some kind of brain damage whether it’s from stroke, brain tumors, brain injuries, or neurodegenerative diseases. The difficulties of people with aphasia could range from mind symptoms like having occasional trouble finding the right word to speak, read, or write to more serious ones like losing the ability to speak, read, or write altogether. It’s said that nearly 180,000 Americans acquire it every year and is more common than Parkinson’s disease, yet most people don’t know much about it.

You can download Wemogee for Android from the Play Store by clicking here.