Could 17, 2023
FEATURE
AssistiveWare ushers in subsequent technology of augmentative and various communication know-how
How app growth firm AssistiveWare is innovating augmentative and various communication software program
Each afternoon, 9-year-old Jay accompanies his mom Meghan Ashburn and his twin brother Nick to Virginia Seaside, the place they unwind from the day’s stimulation at college, of their residence, and out in the remainder of the world.
When Ashburn asks Jay why he loves the seashore, he picks the “sundown” button, then says, “No college. Sure seashore.”
In 2015, Jay was identified with autism. By the age of 4, he began utilizing Proloquo2Go, an augmentative and various communication (AAC) app created by growth firm AssistiveWare, obtainable for iPhone and iPad.
“The seashore has all the time been a spot the place Jay can discover and calm down on his phrases,” Ashburn explains. “As a household, we go to as typically because the climate permits. He loves the sand, the waves, and the beautiful sunsets.”
Proloquo2Go embodies AssistiveWare’s mission: to make AAC an efficient and accepted technique of communication. Quite a lot of folks undertake these instruments after they’re unable to supply oral speech, together with these with ALS, cerebral palsy, autism, and extra.
Bringing this know-how to Apple units represented a substantial shift for AAC customers and David Niemeijer, AssistiveWare’s founder and CEO. With AAC obtainable on client units, the quantity of people that may afford and use the know-how ballooned. This additionally enabled AssistiveWare’s fast progress.
“One of many coolest issues in regards to the iPad and the iPhone is that they’re not separate units,” says Niemeijer. “They’re cool units that everybody else makes use of, too, and that has already made a serious distinction in its acceptability. However we nonetheless have extra work to do.”
AssistiveWare’s subsequent technology of AAC apps, Proloquo and Proloquo Coach, grew to become obtainable in 2022. Past producing speech, Proloquo helps customers construct phrases or sentences, study associated phrases, and increase their language and grammar. Proloquo Coach offers households and educators with the instruments to assist kids and college students of their studying.
Proloquo options 49 real kids and grownup’s text-to-speech voices and 12,000 phrases — about thrice greater than different AAC apps. AssistiveWare apps additionally assist VoiceOver and Change Management for customers who’re blind or low imaginative and prescient, or have restricted mobility.
For AAC customers, Niemeijer believes discovering a customizable expertise is a crucial step. Apple’s new accessibility options — previewed this week — embrace Assistive Entry for folks with cognitive disabilities, and Private Voice for these prone to dropping their potential to talk, giving customers extra choices to tailor their experiences to their wants.
“We’re actually excited to combine these new options into AssistiveWare’s apps,” Niemeijer says. “We lately launched assist for iOS’s built-in voices in Proloquo, so customers have entry to a fair wider vary of voices to select from. The introduction of Private Voice has the potential to offer our customers with much more choices to personalize how they convey. This, mixed with options like Assistive Entry, will enrich the alternatives obtainable to us to customise the person expertise and permit customers to tailor our apps to their persona and desires.”
In the present day, Jay makes use of Proloquo and different modes of communication to talk to his household, lecturers, and mates. Youngsters make up 80 % of Proloquo customers: Jay is among the app’s 100,000 each day customers and 300,000 total customers world wide.
“The notice of AAC among the many public will enhance within the subsequent 5 years,” says Ashburn, who beforehand taught elementary college. Jay learns in a basic third grade class. “It’s a giant deal, as a result of he’s nonspeaking and so they are likely to get separated.” Jay’s third grade classmates additionally use Proloquo as a technique of interacting with him.
“Proloquo’s limitless sharing functionality might be my favourite characteristic. I can construct an AAC crew for Jay. His lecturers, prolonged household, and even classmates have entry to Proloquo on their private units without cost,” Ashburn continues. “I can’t even describe how helpful that’s. It’s such a recreation changer when it comes to leveraging AAC.”
Jay is at present experiencing enchancment in his speech, and makes use of Proloquo to follow talking. To study new phrases, he presses the button time and again, till he can begin talking the phrase or phrase himself. “Shut the door” is a phrase Ashburn says she incessantly hears, as Jay enters his preteen years.
“Many AAC choices restrict the phrases a toddler can select from,” says Ashburn. “Proloquo has such a big vocabulary that Jay can select nearly any phrase he desires. The built-in keyboard makes his choices limitless.”
Again in Amsterdam, AssistiveWare’s crew of researchers, AAC consultants, designers, builders, and high quality assurance engineers — together with 27 native workers and an extra 35 world wide — innovate the know-how behind the merchandise and push ahead analysis and advocacy work round AAC. “Most analysis on this discipline seems to be on the change that occurs upon an intervention for a single particular person,” Niemeijer explains. “We as an alternative have consent-based nameless information on tens of hundreds of AAC customers. That’s not frequent. We deliver insights from a bigger scale to the desk, which results in attention-grabbing conversations.”
Apple’s Guided Entry, an accessibility setting launched a decade in the past to limit units to a single app, radically improved the app’s potential. “Earlier than that, one of many challenges households and colleges had was that the kid would begin in a communication app, however then bounce out and go to a different app,” says Niemeijer. “With Guided Entry, it was doable to maintain the deal with studying and speaking.”
Creating for the Apple ecosystem holds one other key benefit: Apple maintains software program assist for years, making it a sound funding for households and colleges.
“It offers us the time and area to deal with innovation,” Niemeijer says. “That approach, AssistiveWare doesn’t get caught up to now.”
For the subsequent technology of AAC customers, Niemeijer hopes this type of communication turns into as extensively accepted as texting. Greater than growing the know-how, the stigma round AAC represents the most important hurdle for its customers.
“I nonetheless suppose we have now a protracted solution to go,” says Niemeijer. “In case you can’t converse, the belief remains to be that you simply most likely don’t have a lot to say. That assumption is the most important downside. I hope to see a shift towards respecting this know-how so it could have the most important affect.”
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D’Nara Cush
Apple
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Apple Media Helpline
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