Donna Ridley's expertise  and interest  is  speech issues in children.  Specifically, she treats  speech production disorders, which include  articulation disorders, apraxia/dyspraxia,  dysarthria,  nasality/intelligibility  errors, and  children who have that elusive "breakdown in speech intelligibility in ongoing speech " (or "slurred speech"). 

These are "visible" disorders [technically they are AUDIBLE disorders] -- obvious to the listener, and affecting a child's social and academic status. Many children with speech errors suffer social isolation or ridicule, and they may be perceived by teachers or peers as "younger" or "not smart" . Successful treatment can result in an enormous boost to self-image, and greater academic and social success.

Donna’s approach to treating speech errors and disorders is eclectic—she uses no single ‘program’ but uses ‘hands on’ cueing, drills, games, gadgets, competitive challenges -- whatever works. She uses her knowledge of phonetic contexts to choose the most likely sound combinations for producing the target sound correctly (this approach is particularly important when treating distortions of the “R” sound). Successful phonetic contexts (sound combinations) are then expanded to all conversational speech. She is a listed contributor to Carryover Techniques in Articulation and Phonological Therapy by Pam Marshalla (2010) and is an editorial consultant to 21st Century Articulation Therapy by Pam Marshalla (in progress).