Inexpensive but Functional AAC Devices: Discussion and Votes

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The voting part first:
Lately I have been working on an alternative communication device at MIT. This device allows people with poor motor control to communicate easily and quickly, using mechanisms that I cannot yet reveal publicly, but it is very easy to use and faster than many current solutions. In addition, HandWave, the AAC device, is under $100. Many other AAC devices that are mid to high tech are over $5000. HandWave is cheap, easy to use, customizable, and can take a lot of wear.

I am looking to get votes for HandWave in a competition that I have entered. Winning the community choice award could get funding for further development of this device. Could you please give me a vote? You need to register, but it is fast and anyone can register as 'a friend of MIT'.

Vote Here: http://beta-globalchallenge.mit.edu/teams/view/60

Thank you so much, it will really be a great help if you guys vote!

Now Discussion:
I am curious about your experiences with AAC devices. What are the things that they need most? What do you like about them? What sorts of AAC devices have you used? What do you think of the cost? I am looking for views of many people in the autism community. Also, you can request to test the device if you want (though only if you want). I am autistic myself, so I try to provide a perspective from the community, but any opinions or ideas that you want to share would be awesome!

My favorite AAC device is an iPod touch running Proloquo2go. A total of $350ish when I paid for it, with functionality better than some devices that go for thousands.

One of my favorite aspects is the ability to type lying on my side. I got this because I had some horrific hospital experiences when I couldn't use my Dynavox Vmax due to positioning issues.

Are you working with Ros Picard? I work with her and we were trying to find inexpensive AAC.

I have voted for you, and I am following it right now. Thanks for doing this! I am impressed that you belong to MIT in the first place, and it is awesome that you are working on assistive technologies for non-verbal auties. Thanks so much!

Thank you so much! Proloquo is great and I use it when I get overwhelmed. I am working with Roz Picard, I am in her group Affective Computing.

Cool that's the group I work with. From a distance. I can't afford the travel. Coauthored a paper with her on AAC.

Dang, now I want more details!! But I guess you have to keep it under your hat. (See, we aren't all horrible with idioms.)

Anyway, I really hope you're taking into consideration the user feedback issue. I don't know about other people (anbuend seems to be fine with a touch screen) but I simply can't use a keyboard that doesn't tell me where my fingers are. For the record, I don't use a communication device; but I do use technology of all sorts, and am going to design it some day, and it seems to me that many of the people doing the newer communication devices don't remember how important it is to have tactile feedback. The way a key feels under your fingers; the way a button provides initial resistance and then gives way to tell you you've successfully pushed it; the way there are raised bumps on the F and J keys or on the middle key on a phone--all those things. Sure, human beings are highly visual, but your autistic users won't be typical humans, and quite possibly won't be highly visual.

I'm touch-hypersensitive and that means I get a lot of information from my skin; from pressure and texture; and I can't really shut it out. Working with a flat touch screen is just infuriatingly frustrating to me--I can't feel anything on that screen and it gives me the idea I'm not doing anything at all, no matter how much the thing clicks and beeps at me when I've done something. I don't know how common that is among autistic people--that strong need for tactile feedback--but I know it's one issue for me. Oddly enough, I guess my point is that communication devices ought to communicate to the user and that when you're working with weird brains you've got to figure out multiple ways of communicating with them.

Oh, and kudos for working on communication devices. Personally I think that is the single most important piece of assistive technology; because, after all, people can do just about anything else for you; but nobody but you can ever say what you are thinking. Self-determination easiest when you can communicate your decisions; precise communication of said decisions can require assistive tech... well, there you go.

Done any work on how to make them adjustable/programmable? Like, say, you've got a kid growing up--so he can use the same device all the way from simple requests to complex sentences?

I really hope this turns out! I desperately need some sort of AAC. Being nonverbal and only having a computer screen stinks.

Callista is right. I am less dependent on tactile feedback than she is. It's a plus for me. But it's also such a major minus that I am completely in love with my iPod Touch. (Which I am also using to type this.) My joints really hate tactile resistance. They even hate the tactile resistance of a normal touchscreen. This likely has to do with my joint hypermobility since finger splints greatly reduce the pain of typing. Hypermobility is said by Tony Attwood to be common enough in autistic people that he uses it in screening. Capacitative displays are a dream come true for me because ordinary touch screens bend my fingertips backwards. And the tiny keyboard is great too (I have hands below the 5th percentile so nothing is built right for them, but that's hardly an autistic thing).

As far as customization, the device is fully programmable. For full sentences some parts would have to be added, but the core would stay the same. The tactile feedback is interesting. At this point I am not sure what I can do with it, but I will think up ways to work something in.