We lack reliable tools to measure typical development and diagnose language delays in African languages. To create these we must establish norms for early childhood language development. Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs), available for over 100 language wordlwide, ask parents or caregivers to report on a child’s use of gestures, words and sentences to measure language development from 8 months to 30 months and form the basis for developing assessment and diagnostic tools in many countries.

Collecting information about children often involves traveling to different communities and working with local ECD practitioners and children’s caregivers to gather information on language development. This LanguageARC project supports and augments those efforts by allowing parents and caregivers to participate directly online.