One not to miss! Especially if you are in Scotland or the North of England.
This year’s Augmentative Communication in Practice: Scotland study day, to be held in the Stirling Management Centre on Tuesday 9th November will focus on the use of Eye Gaze as an aid to communication.
Eye gaze has always been a useful technique for helping people with communication difficulties to express themselves, whether by eye pointing at objects, or at symbols on a communication board or book, or letters on an e-tran frame.
Recent years have seen exciting developments in technology allowing some people with severe and complex disabilities to control a computer or a communication aid by eye gaze. But the technology is complex and expensive and it is not suitable for everybody with a communication difficulty.
This Study Day will explore issues surrounding eye gaze within both low tech and high tech communication systems and will help to raise awareness of the advantages and disadvantages of such systems.Speakers will include:
- Dr Mick Donegan from the University of East London. Mick was Coordinator of the User Requirements element of the COGAIN project, which led research into the use of eye gaze technology by people with disabilities
- Janet Scott, SCTCI, will present a number of short case studies providing a glimpse of some of the people who have worked with SCTCI to use eye gaze as their means of access to communication.
- Claire Latham, formerly from the ACE Centre in Oxford will describe their Look2Talk project on learning to communicate by eye pointing to low tech systems.
There will also be opportunities to find out about the various eye gaze systems currently available in the UK during short supplier presentations.
Further information is available on the Augmentative Communication in Practice: Scotland web site.
