CALL Scotland has been organising the FREE annual ICT and Inclusion road-show since 2001. It provides people with an opportunity to see and compare the latest software and technology to support students with additional support needs from most of the leading UK companies.

Location and dates for the exhibitions are:

• CALL Scotland, Edinburgh - 18 June 2013
• Thistle Hotel, Glasgow - 19 June 2013

Suppliers will describe their key products in timetabled sessions and there will also be short presentations by staff from CALL Scotland.

The exhibitions will be open from 9.00 am until 4.00 pm.

Free Lunch! A free buffet lunch is provided at each of the three venues. It is therefore important that people register for the exhibition in advance so we have an idea of numbers before the day. Please indicate when you book a place if you wish to stay for lunch.

To find out more and to book online, go to the ICT and Inclusion web page or telephone CALL Scotland on 0131 651 6235 to book a place.

In case you didn't already know, the Summer 2013 edition of the ContAACt newsletter, produced by Augmentative Communication in Practise: Scotland, is available to download now!

On page 5 you will read about Lee Ridley 'Lost Voice Guy,' the first Stand Up Comedian to use AAC, who will be doing a one-off gig for Scottish AAC Users on 19th August 2013 from 10am-3pm at the Corn Exchange in Edinburgh, at the 'Finding Our Voices' event.

This is a UNIQUE opportunity to have a laugh with Lee, meet up with other AAC Users and have a great day out in the height of the Summer in the Festival City!

It's also FREE and lunch is included. For more details and to book a place please email enquiries@acipscotland.org.uk or download a booking form here, so you can get the date in your diary! You can also call 0131 651 6068 for further information.

Competition Time!

Fancy YOURSELF as a bit of a comedian? ContAACt is running a competition (on page 5) to find the best joke from an AAC User and keep Lee on his toes!

Please email your your entries to enquiries@acipscotland.org.uk by 31st July. Lee will judge the competition himself and there are great 'Lost Voice Guy' prizes to be won.

The winner(s) will be announced at the 'Finding Our Voices' event on 19th August, so come on give us your best gags!

NHS Education for Scotland (NES) recently hosted a dissemination seminar in Edinburgh, to update and share information about the development of the Right to Speak project, whose aim is to improve AAC services in Scotland.

Two people who use AAC, Rachael Monk and Barry Smith, gave illuminating presentations about what AAC means to them. Video of those presentations should be available in due course.

Also at that seminar, Communication Matters launched the recently published Final Report of the AAC Evidence Base project. The results of this UK-wide research project were discussed with particular reference to Scotland.

The original Right to Speak report, and three key presentations from the recent dissemination seminar, including the one relating to the CM AAC Evidence Base Report (with a Scottish perspective) are available for viewing and printing, on the Communication Matters website.

Repeated exposure to the same story book is better for child language development than lots of different stories.

Interesting new research findings from the University of Sussex about how children learn and retain new words. I remember researching this and advocating repeated use of the same few stories back in 1994 - in the days of the CALL SAIL Kit (Special Access to Interactive Literacy) project. (Cheering to know that was good advice!) CALL still sells Story Packs - 3 book pack + CD of overlays in symbols

Also reminds me to commend to readers the excellent work of the North Carolina Center for Literacy and Disability Studies

And the great Tarheel Reader site, where you can get access to loads of free switch accessible books (mosty with simple one line per page text), with a speech output option (switch it on via the cogwheel 'Settings' icon)

Don't Wait - Buy it now!

If you haven't bought the Rolls-Royce AAC App Proloquo2Go (P2Go) yet, NOW is the time to buy it!

Why?

Because Version 3 has just come out  and it IS a major upgrade,  - switch access at last! DropBox! (and already, Version 2 was INFINITELY better than Version 1)

Because the price has stayed at £129.99 for the past four years or so, but the price is going to go up by c. 15% on 17th May (to something like £150 ? not sure exactly) Read why.

Yes, it's a lot dearer than most AAC apps. But it's good.

ConnectABILITY.ca

Have you seen this terrific resource? (I can't believe I didn't know about it before - many thanks to Ian Bean - whose website is ALSO a great resource - for drawing attention to it.)

ConnectABILITY is a virtual community focused on lifelong learning and support for children, youth, adults and seniors with an intellectual disability, their families, caregivers and support networks. Users are able to connect, support each other, share, research and advocate via easy-to-use web tools.

A star attraction of the website - maybe for parents, especially - is the free Visuals Engine software, which provides basic templates for making visual support materials easily (1, 2, 4, 6, 12, or 16 to a page). You can use the photos provided, or upload your own photos and pictures. Or - and here's the thing - you can use the picture bank provided, which contains MJ PCS (Boardmaker) symbols  (not ALL of them, a subset of 400 odd). Having made your page, you can save it as a .pdf and print it, then cut up and use the pictures.

The extensive ConnectABILITY website also provides:

• Pages – A custom group of content all based on a subject (Safety)
• Articles – Stories, tip sheets, fact sheets on a specific subject
• Workshops – Audio/visual presentation on a subject, between 10 and 15 minutes in length
• Interactive – Games and activities to play on the computer 
• Podcasts – Audio recordings of presentations
• Links – Links to other useful resources on the internet

All the written materials and Workshops are highly readable and well illustrated. For example, you could download and read the excellent Tip Sheet Using Visuals and then be offered suggestions of other related Tip Sheets, and guided to a short online Workshop  with key information and further links.

CALL Scotland has been organising the FREE annual ICT and Inclusion road-show since 2001. It provides people with an opportunity to see and compare the latest software and technology to support students with additional support needs from most of the leading UK companies.

Location and dates for the exhibitions are:

• CALL Scotland, Edinburgh - 18 June 2013
• Thistle Hotel, Glasgow - 19 June 2013

Suppliers will describe their key products in timetabled sessions and there will also be short presentations by staff from CALL Scotland.

The exhibitions will be open from 9.00 am until 4.00 pm.

Free Lunch! A free buffet lunch is provided at each of the three venues. It is therefore important that people register for the exhibition in advance so we have an idea of numbers before the day. Please indicate when you book a place if you wish to stay for lunch.

To find out more and to book online, go to the ICT and Inclusion web page or telephone CALL Scotland on 0131 651 6235 to book a place.

Once again, the piercingly true words of a parent - therapists and teachers take note!

Dana Nieder, parent of Maya, urging parents and professionals not to 'wait and see' but to plunge in, as soon as possible, to the world of full strength AAC .

There is no time to waste - and there is nowhere for professionals to hide, these days, when the internet can provide such vast resources of information.

It's great that a parent is writing this stuff, because maybe other parents  - and let's be honest, there are many who are frustratingly reluctant to consider any alternative to speech, and just don't 'get' the importance of developing underlying language, and interactive communication skills - will accept it better from another parent than from a professional.

We all want the best for the child, but communication and language are complex functions and skills and there is no quick and easy solution. Both parents and professionals are needed to put all this together. And it's not just about speech and language therapists, who may see the child for a few hours over several months, but for school staff who see him/her for several hours every weekday........

The entire archive of Sarah Blackstone's superb 'Augmentative Communication News' newsletter is now available free online.

The newsletter, typically 8 - 12 pages in length, was published 6 times a year for over 20 years between 1988 and 2009. Each issue would focus on a particular topic, e.g. Using AAC in a classroom, AAC in the Intensive Care Unit, gathering together current research and resources on the topic.

This valuable resource has now been made available for people to download free from the Augmentative Communication Inc web site. Given the passage of time and changing technology, some of the information may now be a little out f date, but the principles on which it was based are still sound and very relevant. Many of the individual newsletters can still be regarded as the best sources of information on their topic.

Sarah Blackstone deserves the thanks of the entire AAC community for her years of work on the newsletter, and for making it available to all.

Carol Paige from the South Carolina Assistive Technology Programme has compiled a pretty comprehensive chart comparing various apps that can be used for augmentative and alternative communication. It will be very useful, but you might need a magnifying glass to read a printed copy!The same site has a number of other useful lists of apps, including:

• Apps that make life easier
• Concept Mapping Apps
• Note Taking Apps
• Reading / Writing Apps
• Voice to Text Apps
• Web Browser Apps
• Word Prediction Apps
• ... and lots more!

Great resource from Lauren Enders  - a  freely downloadable one page poster to support AAC implementation.

This poster should be on every classroom, home and therapy room wall, for the benefit of all those learning to communicate using AAC.

Thanks to Lauren for generating such great stuff, and acknowledging collaboration of her BCIU colleagues Pat Mervine of Speaking of Speech.com, Melissa Skocypec, and Cathie VanALstine.

Lots of people have the lovely easy-to-use switch accessible software from Inclusive Technology, like SwitchIT Maker 2 and ChooseIT Maker 2. But it is disappointing to see how few schools manage to find time to make their own resources, to create personalised exercises that individual children or groups can enjoy and use as valuable learning & practice, as part of curriculum topic or theme work.

To help you, from Ian Bean of SENICT, amongst other freely downloadable goodies here, there are two simple and easy-to-use help sheets, with step by step instructions for: -

• a) how to make an 'animal sound quiz;' in SwitchIT Maker 2
• b) how to make a switch accessible music juke box in SwitchIt Maker 2

A terrific new AAC resource has recently been launched, in the form of the AACknowledge website. This is an outcome of Communication Matter's AAC Evidence Base project.

The new website provides a wealth of useful information for both experienced AAC specialists, who get summaries and links to all published research, and beginners, who get basic AAC definitions and case stories, factsheets, FAQs and more.

It's a actually a well-researched - and much needed and eagerly anticipated - comprehensive database of research and publications in the field of AAC - but cleverly presented in an informative and easy to use way.

A rather amazing new development by two engineering students - a glove that  'translates' a hand gesture into a spoken output. The glove can 'learn' a large number of differentiated gestures (but would different wearers, if physically impaired,  be able to make clearly differentiated gestures consistently?)

This is like signalling / simplified signing rather than 'traditional' use of voice output technology, or rather is an interesting kind of merger between the two.

Brilliant (and honest and funny) insights here from a parent of a young child learning to use a Talker. Every single Teacher, Additional Support Needs Assistant, therapist, parent - and everyone else -  needs to read this! It is a summary of the three most important things about teaching and learning AAC.