My iPad arrived a day early it actually came on Thursday. I have been busy setting up a few pages so I can show you some screenshots.
I was going to have words only but they have a gorgeous dog icon that looks just like Inca and I really wanted to use it for the button leading to her page so I changed my mind and some buttons have icons on it, as the core page with all black folders leading to different categories looked a bit dull otherwise (I thought… but I like a splash of colour!.. you can have it all text only if you prefer)
My Home page
The icons down the side represent the categories: Inca’s Page, Clothing, Food & Drinks, Colours, Calendar (times, dates, months). Some of the categories are not all fully edited yet, it will take a while to complete it all, but here are a few I have completed my first page of vocab for.
Inca's page
Notice I have changed the order, so the words/sentences aren’t just in alphabetical order which would mean alot of scrolling up and down once you have several screens of vocab. I have put the words in order that they would follow as you were constructing the sentence to work your way down the page.
So I can easily say ‘Inca needs to go out for a wee’ or ‘Inca wants her treat’, ‘Inca wants to go out, I’m going to the nature park’.
If you notice the last button where it says Vets, it is shaped like a folder as it leads to a different category. You can set these buttons to be silent (the text does not go up into the window, it just opens the next category) or set it to also say the word on the front. For this grid I wanted it to say the word Vets then open the category for me. Here is next page:
As you add more vocabulary you can reposition the buttons, this is the Clothing category in Edit mode.
Clothing category in Edit mode
Notice on Inca’s page in the bottom right corner was a pencil you press that to get into edit mode then it changes to a plus and a tick as above. To add a new button you press the plus and type in what you want it to say, select an icon if you want one. If you are doing your own sentence you can choose outline colour if you like by looking for ‘kind’ and choosing one.. verbs if you want pink, adjectives for blue etc. A sentence is black, a category is always a Black folder. Folder’s lead to other pages.
If you select Add, it adds it as a normal button, if you want it to lead to another page like the 3 down the left side you choose ‘Add as a Category’. By default P2G order words in alphabetical order but you can swap them around. It is easier to do this once you have a full page! To move a button go into edit mode (press pencil so it turns to a tick) press and hold on a button then slide it across the screen to where you want it, you will notice there is a little lock icon on the ones that have been moved, this is to indicate the default organisation has been overridden, when you press the tick the buttons will remain where you placed them.
The buttons with pics on are silent buttons, they don’t say anything just lead to Accessories (necklace), Colours (rainbow) and Footwear (boots).
The screenshot above (as well as core page) also showed it in ‘wide mode’ where it makes buttons bigger to fill the page. This is handy when you are starting out then when you want to add more just turn it off. As its wider you will notice there are only 5 across. When I take the wide setting off you get 6 across as I chose the 6 x 6 screen. It can go up to 8 across but I found these too small to accurately hit for me personally. There is no limit to how many you can have going down as it is a scrolling screen!! 6 x 6 just means that is what is visible at once on the screen without scrolling.
Here are some other pages:
Sentences
These are some of the most common sentences I might have to say to people who don’t know me such as a Taxi driver to tell him where to drop me off. The clock leads to times, where you would want to give a time at that point in the sentence. This category isn’t finished yet but this is what I have done so far on it.
'Time' category
Proloquo2go is still fairly new to the AAC field after only been out on iPhone around a year, it is £109 at App store which may seem expensive when you consider others range from free, 69p, £2-£10 for alot of them but this isn’t just a basic type and speak, it is a fully customisable AAC solution and excellent value for money.
There are some things it cant do yet, but you have to remember it was originally designed for the iPhone which had very limited screen space, now the iPad is out it opens up alot more possibilities such as adding word prediction in future updates and been able to individually edit each button, maybe upload a sound file to it as well as photo’s and icons, so if someone wanted to record their voice for their kids, pets before they lost their speech they could do that and upload sentences to a button in their own voices.
An Abbreviation-expansion feature would also be useful too if they made it compatible with the existing Textexpander Touch App. It would improve it as a text-only based solution combined with built in word prediction for those who prefer that and widen their market.
For now you have to select icons and text if you want to have a choice to show images on some and remove all icons on keys you don’t want a pic on. If you don’t want any just chose No icons in iPads settings.
Summary:
An excellent App with a very promising future for further development and makes AAC more affordable for those who just don’t have access to funding for ‘dedicated devices’ which cost thousands of pounds. If you can manage to touch a screen why pay £5,000 for a device or wait up to 12 months to see if you can get funding when you can have a device within a week for just over £500!
Big Thanks to the makers Samuel Sennott and David Niemeijer of Assistiveware.
Next Blog: Physical Accessibility on iPad in General, for People with Fine Motor Difficulties
