Speech & Language Therapy Matters in Northern England – and everywhere else too!
Not often (ever?) than a company producing Assistive Technology for Communication (ATfC) makes it THIS big!
Hopefully success in other markets will bring down the price of ATfC products?
English Google Translation – Emerging 101: http://bit.ly/9pDKfs
Tobii website: http://www.tobii.com/corporate/start.aspx
ATfC: http://www.tobii.com/assistive_technology.aspx
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:
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.
I want more details! About the blink-system, the communication aid Adam uses – and more poetry, please.
Brilliant AAC role model and only 10 years old – fantastic!
Amplify’d from www.heraldscotland.com
10-year-old wins award for poetry written by blinks
Brian Donnelly
17 Jul 2010
A blind boy who suffers from major health problems has won an award for his poetry, which he writes by a process of blinking to choose words and syllables.
Judges, however, were unaware of the incredible feat by Adam Bojelian, aged 10, until he reached the semi-finals of the competition.
- ADAM BOJELIAN: Told the award ceremony of his love of writing.
Although Adam instigated his highly personalised means of expression from a very early age, the story of how he taught himself the technique is reminiscent of The Diving Bell And The Butterfly, a memoir by French journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby, which he wrote by blinking his left eye after a stroke.
Adam told the audience: “It is really hard telling people what you are thinking by blinking, but I love writing poems”.
He delighted the audience by reciting – using his computer-generated voice – one of his three entries, entitled a A Silly Poem.
A Silly Poem, Adam Bojelian 2010
At my school the green fish digs a hole and chases the dog down the road.
In the yard the big dinosaur laughs out loud and tells me a joke.
I laugh.
Later that day I saw a bug eat my teacher for lunch.
The lion reads a book in a tree and then, a scientist with a monkey drives a car too fast through the air.
In my dream, I catch a spaceship to the moon.
I go off looking for hot dogs.Read more at www.heraldscotland.com
