Augmentative and alternative communication: the role of broadband telecommunications

Explores a number of the communication advantages offered to nonspeaking disabled people by the advent of broadband telecommunications. The first section of the paper focuses on text messages created by the disabled person alone. Several different word-prediction techniques, employed by nonspeakers who find difficulty in typing at computer keyboards, are experimentally evaluated. The second section of the paper concentrates on text messages created by the disabled person in collaboration with a communication partner. It is shown that existing word-prediction technologies can be enhanced by allowing prediction algorithms to take input from both ends of a telecommunication-based “conversation”. More radically, it is also demonstrated that telecommunications may successfully generate new word and phrase prediction strategies by allowing communication partners at a remote site to aid an AAC user in the creation of a text message. The third section of the paper focuses on graphical and video signals. Collaboration between two people in the use of graphical icons via broadband telecommunications is demonstrated and shown to be as successful as face-to-face collaboration. A comparison of the impact of communicating via graphical icons and photographs is made. Finally, some limitations of video-based nonverbal signalling for nonspeaking people are discussed