Thank you ‘Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Covid-19 Action Fund’ for making it possible for us to develop our Boardbuilder for personalising and adapting symbols for easy to use communication charts. We know we need to find symbols suitable for older people and particular medical items that are used in hospitals and for social care. These […]
Category: newsletter
Free AAC Resources helping with COVID-19
Carole Zangari who hosts PraacticalAAC has provided links to a wealth of free resources to help those supporting AAC users. She offers links to ways of explaining how the virus affects people. There are free communication charts and ideas for keeping children occupied during this difficult time. The Ace Centre in UK has provided an […]
Run and Install Sensory Progressive Web Apps for fun when you cannot get out!
The Sensory App House have turned their tablet and phone apps into Progressive Web Apps that means they can be used on most tablets and phones in a browser. This means the work in Edge, Firefox, Chrome on Android phones or tablets, Windows (inc new Edge Browser), MacOSX, and Chromebooks. The apps can be reached […]
“Why is Literacy Critical in AAC” by Karen Erickson
Karen Erickson, Ph.D. is the Director of the Center for Literacy and Disability Studies, a Professor in the Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences, and the Yoder Distinguished Professor in the Department of Allied Health Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a former teacher whose current research addresses literacy […]
Using an Android Tablet with Switch Access
I thought it might be helpful to show how we used the open source free app Cboard with an Ablenet switch for scanning and access. It was incredibly easy to set up all the Ablenet switches that were provided with 3.5 jacks, including the BIGmack and iTalk4 with Levels, making it possible to create a range of activities. But… What was harder was finding the […]
Voting for symbols update
We have been having exciting times this summer setting up a series of AAC modules to introduce some of the ideas we have about making open AAC symbols accessible to all and to offer a voting system for localisation of some of the images that really do not fit some cultures and fail to represent […]
AAC Training Modules with UNICEF Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro
The last few months have been a busy time linking up all our symbol sets with ConceptNet and starting an AAC training project. UNICEF working with their regional centres in Croatia, Serbia and Montengro have set up a collaborative project enabling us to offer some open source educational resources. The project is called ‘A Voice […]
Global Symbols, Cboard and Jellow on show at the UN in Geneva
On March 7/8 2019 we had a stand in the UN E building during the 40th session of the Human Rights Council We had a chance to showcase both the UNICEF sponsored cBoard and Jellow apps as well as our own symbol set repository. This meant we met many interesting people from around the world […]
Jellow, cBoard and Yuudee 2 update – more languages and evaluations.
In the last few months we have seen some very exciting updates appearing from the UNICEF Innovation Funded Jellow, cBoard and Yuudee teams. It has been so interesting acting as mentors and we have been working hard to connect up the Jellow and StraightStreet symbols to ConceptNet so they will soon be available on our site. The Jellow […]
Localised images to aid recognition – What about free localised AAC symbols?
Thanks to a note from Aejaz Zahid about an article on the BBC website we came across a wonderful example of how localised and personalised pictures can help those who find it hard to read or remember important items in their social setting. The article reminds one of the importance of knowing the local situation in […]
Classifying AAC symbols for ease of use
There has been a long history and much debate about the way we classify AAC symbols for ease of use. Do we make it easy for people to choose the symbols they want on a communication board from a label? Should we try to provide categories and if so which ones? Do we need to […]
Global versus Universal?
“Global” reflects the nuance of culture and language, “Universal” assumes that one size fits all. Working with UNICEF and the AAC Cohort is one of the most exciting things we have been doing recently. We have had telemeetings with lots of discussions about opening the world of AAC symbols to the widest possible audience. Topics […]