So, what do you do on a rainy weekend? You work on your kid’s AAC.
The backstory is this.
Kay’s transition from her PRC ECO2 to the Accent 1400 has not been an
easy one. She uses direct select with a
144 location keyguard on WordPower. The
Accent did not even come with 144 location WordPower but she didn’t want to
give up any of her “words” so we loaded the software from her ECO and got a
custom keyguard made. We also had a
problem with the screen. The ECO screen
required some force to activate the keys whereas the Accent is a capacitive
screen like a cell phone that just requires touch. Kay’s palm has a huge callus from her device
use that kept falling into the keyguard holes and activating the screen. The custom keyguard we had made is actually
twice as thick as the regular one to avoid this issue.
Kay is not your typical AAC user. She actually prefers to use her voice as long
as there is a “known listener” i.e., someone who understands her and can
translate CeePanese (CP talk). However,
she depends on her Accent to access her cell phone for texts and calls, drive
her lap top to access the internet as well as any other computer function, and
public speaking or when there is no one around to help her communicate. At some point, it also turned her TV on for
her and allowed her to change the channels but that’s not working right
now.
The issue she is having is that she is not as efficient with
the Accent as she was with the ECO and it is fatiguing for her to use for
extended periods of time. We have tried
eye gaze and headpointing with many different systems in the past with not much
luck. She has a lot of movement in her
eyes, muscles duh… and her timing
selection is always off. I am in awe of
those who can use eye gaze or headpointing systems. It’s really hard!
We are pursuing two different alternatives to help make
access easier. One involves taking away
some vocabulary by reducing down to 84 from 144 locations. The keyguard holes should be larger and maybe
it will be easier and faster in the long run.
This requires having a new custom extra thick keyguard made ($225
kaching). The second alternative is two
switch scanning. I am trying two
Airetouch switches that require very little pressure to activate and after many
different placement trials, it looks like velcroing them to her headrest might work. I’m also looking for a version of
WordPower that is efficient for scanning, i.e., space is the most used key and
needs to be in the 1st quadrant of the scanning sequence not 7th. I’ve called Saltillo, PRC, my PRC rep, AND
emailed WordPower’s creator Nancy Inman.
So, the next rainy weekend that you are looking for
something to do…..
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