Rebecca Bright: Using iPad apps for AAC — Therapy Ideas Live

Rebecca Bright gives a 5-minute lightning talk about using iPad apps for AAC at the second Therapy Ideas Live event on 20 September 2011, at City University, in London, UK.

[Upbeat music]

Hi I'm Rebecca. I'm a speech and language therapist and now I'm an app developer as well.

Many of you think are going to think that the ipod is cool. It's mainstream. It's fun. It's relatively inexpensive compared to mainstream AAC devices.

And you're going to be thinking about how you're going to use it.

But recently I've seen the questions shift from 'What is an ipad?' to 'How am I going to make the best use of it?'.

So the app store is jam packed with apps that are there for fun, there're for travel, recipes,

and now you have apps for AAC.

When we first started to take notice of apps, this was way back in 2009,

and things have moved quickly especially with the release of the ipad

I'm going to tell you about the apps that I know

This is part of the Proloue2go design by AssistiveWare.

And it will not look dissimilar to a lot of the AAC programs that you've used before.

This is Predictable, a text to speech based app with sophisticated word prediction engine

which is designed to improve efficiency in getting your message across.

Plus it has the useful features of being able to SMS, Email, Facebook, and tweet.

This is Scene & Heard, it takes visual scene approach to augmented communication.

You take a photo on your ipad and then you edit it to make it an interactive page with hot spots to play your video and audio message.

For it to pop up symbols or to link to another page.

Now this all happens on a very common piece of equipment.

There have been over 30 million ipads sold in the last year.

How many iphones and ipods did you see on the tube on your way here today?

And these apps sit alongside all your other apps like email, music, or even angry birds.

[laughter]

Now the ipad and the iphone do have some inbuilt accessibility features

Like voice over which enables you to run your hand over the screen and it will speak aloud as you tap on it.

Plus they're devices that you can integrate, like the switch box, to make them accessibile.

But I think one of the biggest things going for the ipad or the iphone is the cool factor.

I've seen teenagers who've abandoned their previous AAC devices in the years before

Who are now independently programming their apps and showing their mates how to download songs.

But communication for people using AAC is not just being able to have face-to-face conversation.

They want to be able to use social media and exciting tools like skype, and facebook, and facetime

to chat to their friends and family

So how is using an ipad different to using a designated device?

Well some of the things going for an ipad are that it's easy to use

It loads up straight away, and the touch screen is responsive, and the operating system is intuitive both to the user and to the people programming it.

So many of the traditional AAC companies are now commissioning apps.

And certainly put a focus on the need for affordability and innovation across all platforms to meet the needs of a changing client

Who demands the latest in technology

Well of course the ipad is not the answer for everyone

And while there's plenty of hype, as clinicians we continue to ensure that we provide the most appropriate option based on our assessments

The paper I'm about to show you sets out a simple reasoning process

looking at how clinicians go about considering if an i device might be an option

and then how the i device might be then used

This has come out in response to what seems like a big shift in this area

and also the high profile media reports, especially in the US

which led to many families rushing to their speech therapist to demand an ipad

[laughter]

so the challenge is then that the clinicians need to be up to speed

on the range of apps currently available and then keep up with all the new ones

that keep coming out

some of these apps are complete rubbish

and others will be applicable to some of your clients needs

at last count there's a hundred and ten communication related apps on the app store

so it's important to sort them out and identify what might be useful in your assessment kit

clinicians also need to know the difference between an ipad and other tablets

what different operating systems are

how they're going to use it, and how they're going to manage them within their departments

We need to know about the features the apps have

look at how they're customisable and how they might work for our clients

Considering their needs now and in the future

we need to complete assessments that look at all of the operational aspects

like 'does the school have wifi?', 'how am I going to sync to itunes?',

and to see how the person is using the device in a rage of settings with a range of people

we need to assess in real world settings

I'm racing along

[laughter]

Sorry. Really our role hasn't changed. This is what we do anyway

We just need to make sure that we're keeping up to date with the latest technology

and that we know where to find out more about which apps or which device

might be suitable for our particular clients

If you'd like to contact us we can certainly come out and show you what we've found

[applause]

[upbeat music]