WWAAC (World Wide AAC) The Internet

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WWAAC (World Wide AAC)The Internet AAC
Users
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WWAAC Consortium Handicom - NL DART -
Sweden KTH - Sweden ACE - UK HUSAT -
UK Modemo - Finland MITC - Denmark 50P - Sweden
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The WWAAC Goal

• Making the Internet more accessible
• and usable for European AAC users.
• E-Mail (one-to-one, one-to-many,
• mailing lists)
• E-chat (chatrooms, discussion forums)
• Web access browsing

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The WWAAC Goals
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The WWAAC Goals
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The WWAAC Stakeholders

• Languages cultures
• Denmark, Holland, Finland, Spain, Sweden, UK
• AAC end users (young old)
• For example people with learning
  disabilities,physical disabilities, language
  disorder, dysphasia
• Facilitators
• partners, parents, relatives, carers
• Professionals
• SLTs, OTs, physios, teachers, rehab engineers,
  developers, distributors

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AAC User Issues

• Heterogeneous group
• Wide range of individual needs
• Languages - Literacy - AAC Systems
• Visual Acuity Perception
• Cognitive and physical issues

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The Internet

• Problems to overcome
• Chaos complexity
• Access to content - language understanding
• Physical access effectiveness / productivity

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Principles for adaptation

• Simplification
• Easy access to basic functionality
• Removing unnecessary options barriers
• Support for navigation
• Tailoring for multimodal support
• Sound / synthetic speech
• Graphics, symbols, pictures, photos, text
• Efficiency - productivity
• Put a little in to get a lot out
• Usability means much more than
  accessibility
• Easy and safe installation and maintenance

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• Assistive Technology Add Ons
• Keyboard/mouse modifiers
• On-screen keyboards/grids (Wivik, SAW, Clicker)
  
• Word lists, Prediction, Abbreviation Expansion
• Synthetic Digitised Speech - reading text

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State of the Art

• Mainstream Internet Software
• Outlook Express Eudora
• Internet Explorer Netscape
• Specialist Internet Software
• BlissInternet
• SymbolMail
• Inter_Comm
• Mind Express
• Arnit

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BlissWrite - BlissInternet
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Blissinternet

• http/home.istar.ca/bci/blin2.htm
• Special software using specialist server
• Supports Bliss
• Automatically translates between languages
• ? Open system (uses components Blisswrite and
  BlissInternet)
• Keyboard, mouse and switch accessibility is
  supported

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SymbolMail
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• Adapted interface employing standard services (MS
  Outlook 2000)
• Supports PCS and Bliss (via databases stored on
  the users computer)
• Symbolmail offers a forum for symbol based
  message composition/editing and email
  functionality
• Open system, but relies on user having MC Outlook
  2000
• Default input modality is the keyboard. Symbol
  users employ their own preferred system/keyboard
  in accessing the Symbolmail adapted interface.
  That is, symbol-selection and switch input is not
  directly supported by Symbolmail
• Messages may be sent as HTML or as plain text.
  Symbolmail will convert incoming text based email
  into a symbol format where corresponding
  text-symbol concepts can be identified within the
  databases

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Writing with Symbols - Inter_Comm
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Inter_Comm

• Special software using standard server
• Supports PCS Rebus, pictures, and photos symbol
  sets
• The number of email functions (e.g. check inbox,
  address book) made available to users can be
  modified.
• Currently between PCS and Rebus
• Closed system Inter_Comm works exclusively with
  WWS2000
• Keyboard, mouse and switch accessibility is
  supported through WWS2000
• Will convert incoming text based email into a PCS
  or Rebus symbol format. Recipients without
  Inter_Comm/Writing with Symbols 2000 software
  receive text only.

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ARNIT-FlexIT (A portal to Internet Explorer)
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ARNIT

• ARNIT, is a sever based solution for web-browsing
  (and email). Symbol users facilitators can
  access the users site for personalisation of the
  users interface (e.g. address book) from any
  computer that can contact the server over the
  Internet. www.netjob.dk/arnitsvenska

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The Web

• Meldreth Manor School Website

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TASC - www.tascsupport.com
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Tasc - .
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WWAAC Providing the glue

• Preliminary standards for syntactical semantic
  text / message encoding
• concept encoding syntactical/semantic tagging
  of symbols (Bliss, PCS, Picto)
• Tools for text support
• message conversion and simplification - symbol
  to symbol, symbol to text with multi-lingual
  glosses synthetic/digitised speech output
• Tools for task support - web browsing mail box
  handling
• Guidelines and tools for information presentation
  on the web for the WWAAC target groups

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Concept encoding Bliss for Windows
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Free-standing Symbol Databases
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Symbol / language translation interpretation

• For my birthday father will give (gave?)
• me a small dog.

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User Involvement

• User Requirements Document
• Literature state of the art search
• Focus group of professionals to identify key
  issues
• Pilot interviews with UK based AAC end users,
  facilitators, professionals
• Interviews with the same groups in EU core
  countries
• National Workshops (six countries)
• The Simulator (Year 1)
• WWAAC Beta Software (Year 3)
• ISAAC Conference, Denmark (Year 2)
• WWAAC Alpha software
• User workshop, papers exhibition
• Longitudinal Single Case Involvement

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Please Help!

• Mike Clarke or Andrew Lysley
• The ACE Centre
• 92 Windmill Road
• Headington
• Oxford OX3 7DR
• Tel [phone] Fax [phone]
• E-mails clarke_at_ace-centre.org.uk
• lysley_at_ace-centre.org.uk
• Websites www.ace-centre.org.uk
• www.wwaac.org