WWAACWWAACWWorldWWide AAugmentative & AAlternative CCommunication

www.ace-centre.org.uk

www.hubblesoft.com

www.conceptcoding.org

WWAAC Consortium

– Handicom (The Netherlands)– DART Regional Children’s Habilitation,

Sahlgrenska University Hospital (Sweden)– Department of Speech, Music and Hearing,

Kungl Tekniska Hogskölan (Sweden)– The ACE Centre Advisory Trust (UK)– Loughborough University (UK)– Dundee University (UK)– Modemo (Finland)– MITC (Denmark)– Femtio Procent Data (Sweden)

WWAAC

Aim:To make the electronic highway (World Wide Web and e-mail) more accessible and usable for people with complex communication needs

Primary Target Group:People who use graphic symbol-based Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) aged 12-25 years

But also:Non-symbol users and people who use symbols to support their literacy could also benefit from easier access to Internet services

Project Outcomes

• Web Development Tools:– Web guidelines– Concept Coding Framework (CCF)– Web authoring utilities

• Demonstration Software:– Adaptive browser (with layout editor)– Adaptive email (with layout editor)– A linguistically based Writing Support Module

for Symbol Users

• Software Evaluation Protocols:– User requirements– User evaluation guidelines

Focus of this Presentation

• The development of…

– Open source concept coding framework

– Internet applications

– Writing support structures

Concept Coding

• WWAAC sought to develop a

communication infrastructure and

protocol to support symbol-based

communication

• This is underpinned by Concept Coding

• But what is a Concept Code?

““A beverage consisting of an A beverage consisting of an infusion of ground coffee beans”infusion of ground coffee beans”

‘‘CC-COFFEE-1001CC-COFFEE-1001’’

“coffee”

““The food served and eaten The food served and eaten at one time”at one time”

‘‘CC-MEAL-2001CC-MEAL-2001’’

“meal”

““Being of the achromatic colour of Being of the achromatic colour of maximum darkness; having little or no maximum darkness; having little or no hue owing to absorption of almost all hue owing to absorption of almost all

incident light”incident light”

‘‘CC-BLACK-3001CC-BLACK-3001’’

“black”

Why Concept Codes rather than words?

• The Concept Code Framework brings

together thousands of concepts

• A database of unique codes

• It is web-based and open-sourced, so

anyone can make use of it

Concept Code Framework (CCF)

Email Example

CC-HOW-4056

CC-IS-5278

CC-YOUR-6305

CC-CAT-7750

•Jane writes an email to her friend using PCS symbols

•She writes it using supportive software from Company A

•Jane’s friend Mark receives the email

•His computer transforms the codes into Rebus symbols

•Mark reads the email using supportive software from Company B

NO graphics are sent from Jane’s computer to Mark’s – only codes

CC-HOW-4056CC-IS-5278CC-YOUR-6305CC-CAT-7750

Jane has sent Mark the same email, but this time the code is realised as a photograph instead of the Rebus symbol for cat. This is because Mark’s facilitator has further personalised how some of the codes are transformed for Mark. Only on his computer is the unique concept code ‘cc-cat-7750’ transformed into a photograph of Felix (Mark’s cat). The implementation of this sort of personalisation will depend upon the nature of the software being used by Mark.

Internet Example

Content

Page Summary

This page describes how actors are chosen to be in EastEnders. The Deputy Head of Casting for the BBC, Julia Crampsie, answers many questions. For example,she talks about how they find actors and extras. They hold meetings to choose actors, which they call CastingWorkshops.

This page describes how actors are chosen to be in EastEnders. The Deputy Head of Casting for the BBC, Julia Crampsie, answers many questions. For example,she talks about how they find actors and extras. They hold meetings to choose actors, which they call CastingWorkshops.

Close window

This illustrates one of the recommendations from WWAAC’s web guidelines– that website developers should be encouraged to provide a “summary of their site and/or page content”.

For example, the web browser could show the summary in a pop-up window when the user selects the link

Page Summary

BBC - EastEnders - Casting

This page describes how actors are chosen to be in

EastEnders. The Deputy Head of Casting for the BBC,

Julia Crampsie, answers many questions. For example,

she talks about how they find actors and extras. They

hold meetings to choose actors, which they call Casting

Workshops. Back

If appropriate, both text and symbols could appear in the summary.

Concept codes would enable a supportive browser to retrieve the appropriate symbol set for the user (in Rebus).

Page Summary

BBC - EastEnders - Casting

This page describes how actors are chosen to be in

EastEnders. The Deputy Head of Casting for the BBC,

Julia Crampsie, answers many questions. For example,

she talks about how they find actors and extras. They

hold meetings to choose actors, which they call Casting

Workshops. Back

• The same in PCS

What’s Involved?• The website developer will need to input the

concept codes either on the web page itself or within a summary

• To do this the web developer will need a web authoring plug-in to their web design software – WWAAC has made a prototype of a Dreamweaver Extension, but others will be developed too…

• Suppliers who produce supportive web browsers will need to enable their browsers to recognise concept codes so that the codes can be realised as symbols within their software

How will Concept Coding be achieved in practice?

•Each AAC company will need to build a bridge to the CCF so that their symbol database maps onto the framework

•Through the web-based CCF, their software will then be able to interact with software from other AAC companies

•A post-WWAAC project aims to support companies in doing this

programming (www.conceptcoding.org)

CCFCCF

A.N.Other Company

Handicom

A.N.Other Company

What Stage is the CCF at Now?

• The structure in which to store the concept codes

has been developed

• The concept code database itself is growing

• A CCF interest group has been established

• A post-WWAAC consortium is seeking funding to

continue the work and research

• The Nordic Symbered project is developing web

page creation tools based on CCF

(www.symbolnet.org)

WWAAC Internet Applications

• WWAAC has developed an adapted Web

browser

• It is the first browser that makes the WWAAC

concept codes visible – others should soon

follow!

• It is tailored to the needs of people who use AAC

• Developed out of user requirements study and

evaluated by end users

Key Features• Graphical favourites page• Integrated speech synthesiser that can be

customised• Summary function• Concept coding aware• Layout editor• Selection sets for inputting data into online

fields• Alternative access

Supportive Writing

• Goal: to support symbol users in making morphologically and syntactically correct sentences and phrases

Why is this needed?

• Symbol based messages are often

linguistically different from spoken

messages

• In face-to-face communication the

communication partner can co-construct /

pose clarifying questions

• The Internet cannot do this

Link with Concept Coding

• A morphologically and syntatically correct

sentence / phrase can be automatically

converted into other symbol systems or text

• Less ambiguity means less scope for

mistakes

• This automatic conversion employs concept

codes

The Software• A corpus of written sentence types was

collected and analysed

• The linguistic support provides grammatical model structures

• The semantic content is interchangeable

• The person using the software is guided through producing a sentence

• Underlying linguistic rules result in grammatically correct text

Conclusion

• Goal: To enfranchise symbol users to

become active players in the Internet

community

– Web Development Tools e.g. CCF, guidelines

– Demonstration Software e.g. Browser,

supportive writing

– Software evaluation protocols