Pocket-sized AAC: Locabulary Lets Your iPhone Talk for You
By Quest,Publication Date: August 2009
Article features a free software application that turns an iPhone or iPod Touch into an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) device. Downloadable through Apple’s iTunes Store, Locabulary (http://locabulary.com/) makes selected groups of words available to users depending on their location at the time. The speech generator was created through collaboration between clinicians at the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s clinic at Children’s Hospital in Birmingham, Ala., and PUSH Product Design, with a grant from the Alabama Council for Developmental Disabilities. The MDA clinic team observed that children who abandoned other expensive communication devices continued to communicate using their cell phone’s text-messaging function. These observations led to the development of Locabulary, which lets users construct sentences by manipulating the touch screen of their iPhone to select from menus of location-specific words. The iPhone then speaks the selected words. Additional Locabulary features include: (1) two different text sizes, (2) a quick-phrase list containing general conversation words, (3) an assistance list that lets the user ask for help, and (4) a moods list that allows users to announce their mood status.
Published by: Muscular Dystrophy Association (Website:http://www.mdausa.org)
Link to text: http://www.mda.org/publications/Quest/extra/aug09/aac.html
