Augmentative and Alternative Communication Systems

Augmentative and Alternative Communication Systems

Damian Gordon

Cook and Hussey, Chapter 11

What is Assistive Technology?

“Any product, instrument, equipment or technical system used by a disabled or elderly person, made specially or existing on the market, aimed to prevent, compensate, relieve or neutralise the deficiency, the inability or the handicap.”International ISO-9999 Standard

Last Time

Introduction

AAC are “designed to ameliorate the communication problems of people who have severe speech and language impairments across the age span.”

Introduction

It’s important to remember that…Language is any conventional system

of arbitrary symbols organized according to a set of rules.

Speech is the oral expression of langauge

Disabilities Affecting Speech, Language, and Communication

Dysarthria is a disorder of motor speech control resulting from central or peripheral nervous system damage that causes weakness, slowness, and a lack of coordination of the muscles necessary for speech production.


Apraxia is a disorder affecting the coordination of motor movements involved in producing speech caused by a central nervous system dysfunction.


Aphasia is a language disorder that occurs as a result of a cerebral vascular accident to Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). It can affect both expression of spoken and written language, e.g. some people can forget names, places, or events. Others may lose the ability to understand spoken langauge.


Other conditions ameliorated by ACC– Cerebral Palsy – Autism– Stoke– Spinal Cord Injury– Degenerative Diseases

AAC Assessment and Evaluation

A predictive assessment means that you attempt to understand a person’s needs and status both today and predict their future needs.

A serial assessment is a continuing evaluation to meet changing needs.

A curriculum-based assessment is continuous in classrooms to help coordinate AAC interventions with the achievement of educational goals.

Barriers to Participation

Consider the case of a child with a speech difficulty, if their school that purchases a speech-generating device (SGD), the child will have to leave the device at school when they go home.

This creates a real barrier into providing full societal participation.

But school typically allow student to take home musical instruments, why is this?

Assessing Representation

A unique problem in the domain of AAC is determining the symbols an individual can use to communicate.

Light-Tech AAC Options

Mid-Tech AAC Devices

Mid-Tech AAC Tools

High-Tech Dedicated AAC Tools

High-Tech Non-Dedicated AAC Tools

Communication Software

High-Tech AAC Systems

Human-Technology Interface– The interface allows the client to access the low-,

medium, or high-tech device. – These can be joysticks, keyboards, switches,

mouses, etc.– Most selection sets use visible symbols, so

people with visual impairments need an alternative approach.

Vocabulary Retrieval Techniques

Abbreviation expansion Word prediction Word completion


Instant phrases are those used frequently for greetings, conversational repairs (e.g. “that’s not what I mean”), or similar actions; these are often encoded as single keystrokes, or near the beginning of a scanning matrix.

Coding of words, sentences or phrases on the basis of their meaning is known as Semantic Encoding or Minspeak.


A picture of an apple could mean “food” A picture of the sun could mean “morning” Then a picture of an apple and the sun could

mean “What’s for breakfast?”

Mainstream Technologies

e-mail– because of the asynchronous nature of e-mail, a

conversation typically takes place at a slower rate– It allows people to communicate without being

present in the same physical location– AAC users report that they enjoy establishing

relationships with people who experience them first as people and second as having a disability

Mainstream Technologies

Mobile phones– As phones get more open-source leads to a

greater diversity in software tools such as text-to-speech, voice recognition, and downloadable user profiles

– Cameras being built into phones as help those CCN users

Vocabulary Selection

Once an AAC is selected, it is necessary to create an individual vocabulary set for programming into the device.

Some conversation categories are presented in the following pair of slides.

Vocabulary Selection (1 of 2)

Category Sample Vocabulary

Initiating and Interaction Hey, I’ve got something to sayCheck this outCome talk to meMay I help you?

Greetings Hello, I’m pleased to meet you.Where have you been? I’ve been waiting forever.What’s happening?

Response to greetings I’m fine.Great, how are you?Not so hot, and you?

Requests I’d like a_____________ (object, event)I’d like to go to__________(place, event)

Vocabulary Selection (2 of 2)

Category Sample Vocabulary

Information Exchange What time is it?I have a question.The concert begins at 8pm.

Commenting I agree. / I disagree.What a great idea!Uh-huh.OK.

Wrap-Up/farewell Well, gotta go. See you later.Bye, nice talking to you

Conversational Repair Let’s start over.That’s not what I meant.You misunderstood me.

Vocabulary Selection

Vocabulary needs to vary by context, communication mode, and individual characteristics.

Good stuff at;– http://aac.unl.edu/vbstudy

http://aac.unl.edu/vbstudy

Physical Skill Development

AAC devices require physical skill to operate them effectively.

It takes practice. It is important to distinguish between the

physical skills required to use an AAC device from the communication skills needed to employ it.

Communicative Competence

Depends on many factors. The context in the HAAT mode affects

competence in several ways. The partner and his or her skill in listening,

the environment of use, and the cultural factors all contribute to or detract from communicative competence.

Example

Check out the OATS site

http://www.oatsoft.org/Software/Software/by-category/Repository/Function/AAC



Documents

Augmentative and Alternative Communication Systems