Dysarthria is a speech disorder in which a person’s articulation is impaired and impacts their speech intelligibility. Dysarthria causes imprecise movement of our tongue, lips and mouth and results in slurred speech. Apraxia is the inability to coordinate the tongue, lips and mouth to produce speech sounds correctly.

Characteristics of dysarthria/apraxia:

• Speech that is hard to understand (slurred or mumbled)
• Speaking to slow
• Speaking too fast
• Choppy sounding speech
• Substitution or distortion of sound
• Changes in your voice (hoarse, breathy, strained voice)
• Low voice volume

Speech therapy for dysarthria and apraxia targets improvements of articulation and movement of the mouth, lips and tongue in a more precise manner. It also works on the use of compensatory strategies to improve a person’s speech intelligibility.