The Living Schoolbook

Not everything I saw at the 2003 Closing the Gap conference was related to a specific technology.  This session address best practices for creating buttons for AAC devices.  Here is my post from just after the conference about that session:

Many AAC devices use a grid layout as navigation for the device. Most allow the therapist to customize the layout and navigation as the student grows and learns. This may mean the addition of new words/utterances or entire new groups of phrases and words.

The first step determining grid layout depends on screen size, fine motor skills of the student and cognitive ability of the student to handle many choices. The size of individual squares can not be too small for the student to navigate well and the number of choices available can't be confusing and/or lead to a lot of "hunting" for the correct choice.

Planning of board layout needs to take into consideration the immediate needs of the student as well as leaving space for a three year plan for adding new symbols as the projected needs of the students are added. This would leave a lot of empty spaces on the boards that will make for a lot of "unnecessary" navigation at first, but will make the transition to subsequent layouts less traumatic. As new words are added the boards will fill in with a more complete vocabulary.

It is suggested that a template board be created with navigation back to home, a link for "pseudo-scrolling" (for board with more objects than can be displayed in the grid) and a link to a board with "social phrases" ("Hi. How are you?", "Yeah", "No, thank you.", etc.). The initial board will be where all new conversation starts, so it is suggested that the first board not contain many words/utterances, but instead have the links to the main locations he will use the speech. A "Home" board would have phrases very different that the "School " board to reflect the things the student would talk about in such a setting.