AACDroidMobile AAC Application for Sentence Creation

Team Members: Kevin Greene, Christina Fries, Wei Liao, Hien Huynh, Jiho Kim, Apoorva Dewangan

Mentor: James Han

What is AAC? Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC)

refers to communication that expresses our thoughts without oral speech.

People with speech problems rely on AAC through facial expressions, gestures, symbols, pictures, and text.

6 to 8 million people in the United States have some form of language impairment. (National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders)

AAC aids help disabled people interact socially, learn interactively, and communicate effectively.

Information acquired from American Speech-Language-Hearing Association: www.asha.org

Open Source AACDroidOpen source AACDroid is an AAC aid that

allows users to construct sentences by choosing pictures in a sequence.

Originally created in Java for the Google Android, the AACDroid program functions in modern mobile smart phones, which have become increasingly popular.

Image acquired from www.iconspedia.com

Products in the Market

Proloquo2Go

DynaVox Xpress

• AAC aids currently in the market are expensive, even though they have simple functionality.

Images acquired from www.dynavox.com Image acquired from

www.proloquo2go.com

Decision Tree AlgorithmEdit Item

(Optional)

Image to Speech

CategoryHome

Choose Category:

Basics, Activity,

Expression

Basics: Choose Image

“Hello”

Change name

Change statement

“Goodbye”

Activity: Choose Image

“I am hungry”

Expression: Choose Image

“I am happy”

ImprovementsIn the past week, the following features have

been enhanced:Ability to create customized entriesImplementation of a database to store unique

entriesDisplay of the sentence currently being

spoken

Demo

Future ImprovementsInterface

A more extensive list of categories, items, and voices

Zoom and scroll optionsAbility to create complex sentences with

choices for parts of speech, prepositional phrases, and conjunctions

Drag and drop, allowing the user to change the order of the buttons on the layout

Future ImprovementsScalability

Creation of subcategoriesAbility to set category namesCustomizable button iconsCompatibility with other versions of AndroidPorting to other platforms

Future ImprovementsSettings Menu

Text-to-Speech: change language, pitch, speed

Restore default databaseSet start-up message

Thank You

http://code.google.com/p/aac-android