Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) devices can help individuals find the right words for everyday situations. According to the AAC Institute, approximately 2.5 million Americans have some kind of speech disability that prevents them from being easily understood by others. AAC equipment breaks down the communication barriers!
7-Level Communication Builder
This piece of AAC equipment, which is available from Enabling Devices, will record and play back up to 112 messages, or as few as 2. Its removable trays have deep sides to easily separate one square from another when pressed to play back a message. Large symbols on the buttons help identify what each message is about.
Hip Talk
Hip Talks are communicators that can be worn much like a fanny pack. The soft nylon pack fits easily around the waist for easy access and portability. Recorded messages can be played back by pressing the large switch plates.
The INDATA Loan Library carries a couple of versions of Hip Talk. The Hip Talk 12 contains a 12 window grid and can record up to 55 messages.
Boardmaker with Speaking Dynamically Pro
Boardmaker is essentially a picture index software for Windows that can be used to make communication boards. It contains 3,000 symbols available in either color or black and white. Dynamically Pro comes with the high-quality, natural-sounding voices. The combination of the two devices turns your computer into a word processor that talks.
EZ Keys
This AAC software comes with word prediction, text-to-speech output, and contains thousands of phrases that are preprogrammed. EZ Keys also offers “next word prediction”. This neat little feature actually learns its user’s word patterns to guess what will be typed next. EZ Keys will bring up the last six words you used in conjunction with the word you just typed. You can also store thousands of phrases and sentences that can be recalled from Instant Phrases.
These are just a few of many AAC devices available today. Assistive Technology is constantly changing to meet the needs of everyone.
Is there software out there that counts each single switch hit? My son uses two step scanning and has a switch hit goal. We are wanting to find something that will record or count each switch hit not just selecting the button.
Thanks,
Carla
Carla,
I have spoken with our augmentative communication specialists about your questions. As far as switch counting goes, most of the time they count by hand. They do not believe that the switch itself will actually count for you, however if you are using software on a computer or device with your switch, it is possible that the software can do that. You’d have to look into the software to find out, possibly by contacting the manufacturer.
Hope this helps!
Check out the Teaching Accessibility Software – it has built-in data collection that will tell you when the switch is activated – We use this with my students to monitor switch activation data. It lets you record date, switch access method, time student used the software and number of switch activations. Then you can print the data and collect it in the student’s file. I’ve used this for two-switch step scanning also.
go to http://www.softtouch.com for more information.
Y