in

12.6.23 Therapy Box presents Predictable & Scene and Heard with Rebecca Bright

12.6.23 Therapy Box presents Predictable & Scene and Heard with Rebecca Bright



Predictable is an award-winning text-to-speech app which leverages smart word prediction that runs locally on the device, offline - yet it learns the individual's pattern of use. It is highly customizable and flexible.

It is currently used by people in 35 countries and in 9 core languages, other than English. This session will provide a comprehensive overview of the app and its use across the life span, including for children and teenagers. The new features in Predictable 7 are particularly geared towards supporting transition from symbol-based apps to text-based solutions.

Scene & Heard Pro is a visual scene display. This session will present an overview of the evidence related to the use of visual scene displays across the life span, with examples of application via the Scene & Heard Pro app. The recent update was supported by the RERC on AAC and two new features - video visual scenes and transition to literacy - are now available in the app.
Creative Commons Attribution - Non-Commercial - No Derivatives
Link for ECHO Voices SMORE: https://www.smore.com/9jqcs
Today's session we welcome Rebecca brigh from London she is the co-founder of therapy box and she is going to tell us all about predictable and seen and heard Pro the handouts for this session are available at this bitly link and I will put that in into the chat box for you

I'm going to stop sharing and I'm going to turn that over to Rebecca thank you so much for that that's that's great um I think you can see my slides now too is that yeah great um so to give you a little bit of background on me just before I start

Which might help with bit of context behind what we do at therapy box um I'm a a speech and language therapist or speech pathologist by backround actually I um I'm from Australia originally and um graduated in um with my Speech Pathology degree back in 2001 um and uh then worked clinically

For for quite a long time before starting therapy box back in about 2010 um and the time since then have um you we we develop a apps but we also um work with universities um Publishers um different un departments on uh projects related to um building tech for speech um language and

Cognition um so that's what we do and I'm um I've taking sort of a semi sabatical from therapy box at the moment because I've just started working on my PhD uh here in London at University College London so I'm looking at um social participation uh dementia and

Hearing loss so um that's a little bit about me but therapy box is is um 12 13 years old now and we've got two main apps and that's what I'm going to talk to a little bit about today please feel free to interrupt as I go I'm happy to be

Interrupted let's see okay so um I'm going to talk first about senior heard Pro it's actually brand new um and predictable uh sort of 10 11 years old but I'll talk about senior heard Pro first um it came out earlier in 2023 it's um an augmentative communication aid but

Specifically um it's um a visual scene display approach to to a so um I I don't know how familiar everybody is with that approach but it's a it's an approach that uses images or photos to represent somebody's uh context so their real life environment um using photos typically of

Their environment so instead of a grid-based setup the the display really is a photo um which um cater to their individual um personality their needs um their communication abilities their communication preferences and um you know and and offer quite a lot of flexibility in terms of how you can

Communicate um we um spent a large part of last year working with the RC on AAC um to uh look at some of the research that they had done and a big remit of the of that of that group um is to support research being transitioned into

To real life technology so this was a great opportunity for that um so uh we looked at some of their work on transition to literacy video visual scene displays and the general um approaches to Justus in time programming um to make sure that we were an evidencebased or an evidenced informed

Uh app so I'll talk as I talk through some of the features uh I'll mention that further but um the res search that underpins the feature development is listed in the app as well so seen and heard Pro um as I said the idea is you take a photo and then

You add a hot spot and by Hotpot I mean sort of an active area on the on the screen so in this case the photo would be likely say of this young girl at the gardening center or in a um know in the UK we have a lots where you can you know

Do community gardening it looks like it's a bit like that and um I can draw a Hotpot so in this case that purple um outline on things I want to attach a message to or um have some content activated so it could be really simple I might just want to

Um draw this purple C purple shape around say it's me and I can say I love gardening or last week I went gardening it really doesn't matter what the message is that somebody can support this girl to record um to be able to to then share at

That time or later when reflecting on what they've been um what they've been doing so oh let's see if this little video might work actually here you go so this this is how I do it I've drawn a circle on the um around the pencils it's

Formed a shape let me there we go I'm drawing a picture around the girl and then up Pops a little modal where I can then record some audio um so I think I recorded you know I love drawing or something like that and I can add other

Things to it too I can add the transition to literacy feature I can link to another scene um I can you know can do loads of things but the idea is that I can create at school I drew some pictures with my pencils oh there you go I drew a lovely

Picture of my house I don't could you hear that did that audio come through yeah great link to another scene as well so yeah it's super super simple to be able to create that and I'll just let me bring it back to where Um where I show yeah so you know the really the it can be as simple as just record recording some audio but you can click on the advanced editing or additional editing and then open up a full menu of other things you can do so you can either use um Voice output that

Can either be text to speech so I could type in the message so that need not be in English that could be in any language be that the iPad has a a voice engine for which is loads or I could record the audio myself or have someone else record

It um or um you know it's it's really flexible in that way I can attach a video to that so it might be in this case it might have been a video of me drawing or you know showing you the artwork on the wall or um you know a a

Video it could be anything it really doesn't matter I can transition I can do the transition to literacy feature which I'll show you in a minute I can link to another scene so if I had another scene which was the art final artwork or I had another scene that was

Um me doing the next activity I can I can link that as well I can also add a little label to the Hotpot if that's useful for some uh for some individuals so that's how you create it it's really simple it doesn't need any training or you know it's sort of up and

Running and then I can also create video visual scenes and this differs um in so far as that instead of having a photo as the base you have a video and the challenge here is then to find um good opportunities to add a a static scene

Just like the the visual scenes we had just before so if I this is a video for example of young a young man in a garden center going about um label you know creating a list of of plants and so I can kind of splice that video where it's appropriate to add um

Static uh or you know freeze frame of that video and then add hot spots on that Freeze Frame and so the nice thing is that helps provide uh contextual prompts but also the temporal nudge really of where those communication opportunities might exist within a in a more you know in a more

Dynamic environment um and so a lot of the work that went into developing this feature um was in a consultation with David mcnorton and it's re and I think it's really about finding ways to support communication but also Independence and participation so I think thinking about those three things

Together and not in isolation so um it's not just about you know being able to ask for help but it might be about you know working out what the next step is in a process so um might be used in um supported workplace type activities uh or procedural type

Tasks um it could be used in neuro rehab it could be used in the classroom you know it's really um designed to be quite flexible and you can add those scenes so the scenes then sit down the bottom as little those little snapshots or freeze frames where you have content on them

And you can navigate by tapping on those directly um and you add more and you can take them out as well so you could always have quite a lot of communicative prompts or a whole lot of scaffolding really sitting along the bottom and then take those out as you as

You didn't need them so that's creating video uh visual scenes but you can also create a grid with seen and her so we do have the capability for you to add in um like a cell setup um and you can either add in um symbols and we have us our own little

Symbol Library within the app or you can add in photo so i' um uh got a few examples where instead of have instead of having these symbols for example you can have the um the the the pictures that you then Us in subsequent visual scenes so these sort of acts as a choice

Board or a landing another version of the landing page for senen Hood to navigate to um uh you know making a choice okay so this is the um I'm going to just pause the video so I can explain it before we start so this is the transition to literacy

Feature uh and this as I said um came about through our um uh consultation from the Aras in particular from Janice light um looking at how we could embed the um a module to support the transition to literacy approach so um the idea is that you can embed

Opportunities for exposing a child to or an or an adult uh I suppose to um uh site words or decodable words um using the using an approach that they've used before in quite a lot of their studies um and as I said we referenced some of those in the app itself so you

Can go and read more on them um but the IDE AA is that you can provide opportunities to an a user to or to a visual scene display user in accessing or being exposed to um site words and decodable words so this is how you

Create here I show you how to do a decodable word the picture is a boy playing football of soccer by the way so so you add in phon Name by phon name or you could do syllable by syllable um and I'm record I don't know if you can

Hear it in the video but I'm recording each of those phone names separately and then I record kick as a as a word too so when the person comes along to use it in the visual scene they can and if transition to literacy is turned on they

Can tap it and then they're presented with kick and uh this approach is is is um as I said based on on on the work that the RC on AC did you know including that it's yellow on black the timings and so on so it's um fairly true to to the

Research that they've done to date so um you know I'm really interested to to hear more about how people might be able to use uh this in the classroom or with children um using as in particular using visual scene displays and can you can you tell me what is the re

RC yes sure I'm oh I mean I'm really I'm not always great with acronyms I think it's the oh I'm gonna let me I'm gonna google it and tell you before the end of the session but it's something like the research oh lovely Kelly faer has helped

Us out here oh thank you okay thank you Kelly yes oh perfect There's the link yeah yeah so a funded group of uh of researchers with and they've got different sort of work packages with within that looking at different aspects of AAC and visual and um visual scene

Displays is that is is quite a key part of the work they've done um and you know it's number of years of of research that that that sort of sits behind that um okay so another feature which um we have is the visual timetable uh which is great because you can then schedule

The scenes that you want so you can access the scenes either through the main page where you've got folders and subfolders and you can tap on the scenes you want or you can access them through this visual timetable where I can um pop the scenes on certain times that make

Sense for them to appear uh and then I can come and access them through um through that time uh link so at 9:00 if every if on Mondays and Wednesdays we have a circle time or you know some songs I can put that there if at 12:00 3

Days of the week I'm at the Garden Center I can run that across there or I go shopping on Thursday those scenes can sit within the um you know within the within the timetable and I can access them by tapping on them that way I can also create a communication

Book with the various scenes I have so I could make a huge number of scenes but I might only want to choose four of them to then print out and have as AOW Tech version of what I have um or to just have as a topical book you know it might

Be I know Winter holidays or um you know a particular class and have my have things arranged that way as well so I can um print that out and I can also share the scenes so if I had scenes that were applicable to other people I could share a scene for them to

Use um as well like maybe a festive scene that or you know a class-based scene you know a teacher could easily share that between his or her students uh you can buy um scen and her Pro on the app store or the Play Store so it's available also on Android uh including on

Chromebook and uh yeah on iPads and you can either do a subscription or you can like or an upfront purchase um and I'm really if you want I want to say how many people yeah 11 F if you want I'll give you all a

Copy so you've all got a copy so um I will um send over that information after this but I'll make sure you all have a copy because I think it's brand new and the more I can get it out to people the more other people will see it so let me

Um get it to you and I think the thing we seen and heard is the more you start using it the more you understand how to use I think it that whole approach the visual scene display approach is sometimes uh not so obvious how as to

How it will best be used by by different um patient groups or client groups but once it sort of once you have your hands on it people go oh I get it and I'm using with this person and this person and um you know so it's I think it's

Something that um is really useful to have a copy of so I'll send that out to to everybody right I'm moving on now to uh predict ictable and predictable um now it was launched in January 2011 so we're coming up for 13 years old um uh for predictable and it's it's an app

For a very different um type of AAC um user oh I can see um Kim has her hand up let me thank you Rebecca I just had a quick question thank you so much for offering the free version of seen and heard I've used I used it many many years ago and

It was much simpler excited about the new things um but I was just wondering in general just for as we're talking to other therapists does therapy box tend to offer a free like free um samples to um speech language Pathologists who do evaluations what's the yeah General

Approach to that yeah so I approach to it is um yes we offer apps to anybody who does evaluations but we ALS we offer that um we ask that people come and do either a session like this if we have or they come along and do we have a bookable um

Slot um and we can and we can also do a roundabout this time as well we usually we have one a bit earlier in the day which might be too early for you but um where we ask them to come along for a half an hour sort of chat through the

App so that we feel that people have the have have a a good grasp on it and then we'll give people um evaluator copies that they can use we also um can uh provide um shorter term access for people um who might want to trial it

Out as well so if you do want to do that you can let us know we can help on a Case by case basis to do that and that to that session we have each day is also open to parents carers people using it

And we have you know it can be used for troubleshooting it can be used for training it can be used for you know I've got this app now what how can I make sure I'm getting the most out of it so we just we sort of have that open

Slot that we try to um keep available for people which which because we're not a big company with reps going around and we you know we no one in the US and you know so we try to find ways to um get our app out to as many people as

Possible but make sure that we can support people with it than just sending out codes that may you know that may or may not be useful for somebody that's great yeah that makes a lot of sense thank you okay good uh so yes to predictable so predictable I'm going to talk about

Predictable seven because it's coming out very early in the New Year if um we we'll be at um Atia in the end of January in orando and that'll hopefully be its big um that'll be its first outing um uh and that's how that's our Rush towards the end of the year for all

The developers getting predictable seven ready so uh the original version came out in 2011 uh and it's really designed for people with M speech difficulties primarily but uh is being used more and more by a broader range of people including people with um you know people in ICU people uh post lentectomy people

Post um and also people who increasingly a large group of people who have um spee some of the time or don't always feel comfortable speaking autistic teenagers and adults probably the larger group who who I'm referring to um and then uh younger users uh children with cble py Down

Syndrome you know range of of needs where they manage a text based system because predictable is uh primarily uh keyboard oriented um and it's really been designed and we continue to have this as our key uh goal with predictable is to be able to reduce keystrokes or switch hits

And get messages out as quick as possible um we try to find ways for efficiencies to you know to on every button you know does this need to be two Taps that how can we get this back to One Tap we want to make everything um as

Economic in terms of use as possible for somebody because typically the people who use predictable uh if they have significant motor speech difficulties you know it's quite likely that they have other uh issues you know with with their Upper Limb um or other you know other other

Needs as well so it's it's a keybo primarily a keyboard app but there's also ways to save messages for quick access so um I'll show you that as well this is the um the main screen this is predictable seven you're you're getting a sneak preview of um and the

Prediction strip sets across the the middle of the the screen um and uh Works locally on the device so you don't need to be online um however in seven predictable 7even with some of the additional uh bilingual languages you will need to be online but we'll we'll

Will um flag up which ones those are um but as I said a keyboard based app and you you can speak the message you can share it out on on on on iMessage or make a FaceTime call you have loads of different uh options as to how you do

That and really the idea is that you can customize um everything uh about predictable to suit your personality but but also most importantly to uh suit your access needs your sensory um requirements your motor um abilities so everything can be customized in terms of color uh and font and so

On uh have a question from Kim yeah I'm was just wondering um Rebecca uh does it go in landscape mode or portrait mode it does yes yes it's it's in both um and on iPhone as well and watch and and on Android um in landscape and portrait as well thank

You and um it h offers we offer currently in predictable six we have 27 secondary languages and we have that will go up to 40 plus secondary languages and we have 10 core languages as in like there is predictable which is predictable English so it's for the UK with the UK and US

Word prediction engine but you can in that to a secondary language um if you're bilingual or multilingual you can so you can switch to for example you can have running English and French English and Spanish English and Arabic and um those 10 core languages you know are predictable English

Predictable uh French Spanish Norwegian Danish norw um Finnish Swedish Dutch German Portuguese um and there'll also be Hebrew and Arabic an Italian added to the core bunch of languages but there are 40 plus languages as secondary languages for each of those so you could have French and Arabic or French and um

Hindi uh Mandarin and so on so um it will that will really open up the the the the app to a whole lot of people who may not have access to um AC um as as their secondary languages um in predictable seven so so we're hoping to be able to

Um you know make that more accessible for for more people oh here's the I was trying to remember them all so here these are the 40 new these are the 40 languages that'll sit as second languages in predictable English for example so uh quite a few um there and I I don't know

For example in the UK Al after English the the languag is most often spoken are polish um some of the Indian languages in Arabic Russian so that um that helps a lot of people who didn't otherwise have access um to to those languages uh another brand new thing in

Predictable 7 uh is that we're going to have symbol supported messages so the word prediction can have symbols turned on um to run alongside um the word prediction and that will appear in the message window and the symbols are also in the phrase Bank um you saw the phrase Bank a little

Bit in this picture here in I think it's in or I'm not sure which language is looks like Russian I think over to the side there uh so you know but in English obviously you can you you know that'll all be that's all symbol supported as

Well um we offer um a r we offer all of the iOS voices um and that's a huge number of voices that are available on the iPad or on whichever Android device you're using as well and then we're also compatible with the four major voice banking engines um speak unique model talk at

Acella and voice keeper um so people can uh Bank their voice if they know they're going to lose it and then um use it if they need it later on for example have ALS or or another neurodegenerative condition or somebody can uh donate their voice and be a proxy

Voice for somebody who's who hasn't had that opportunity to bank their voice uh and it's also compatible with the Apple's personal voice which they launched earlier in the year as well um so you have a range of voices and you can adjust um a whole lot of the the

Settings about how that works within predictable and there's going there's going to be other features I can tell you about it's there's going to be a new feature which you will need to be online for which is to access chat GPT so people could for example uh seek support to generate of

Through jbt so to have an AI generated uh text come up on their screen and they can select whether they want that to then be spoken out so they can ask you know pop in a prompt that they want a support from chat GPT on so that's an

Online feature that will be possible there'll also be a translate feature so uh I don't know if I was if I had a care of perhaps who spoke a language other than the one I spoke um I could use the translation feature to translate my message on my message window to into

Their language and there'll be loads of different um new themes and looks um that you can use as templates as well and in addition there there's going to be updates to the ey tracking so at the moment you can use the ey tracking with either the Toby TD pilot on the iPad or

The IR respond Hero on the iPad you can use it with face and then you you can use it with um with the iPad itself you can use head tracking and and uh face gestures as well so there's more work um that's gone into that the soiling predictable

Seven uh and really that's a want want to tell you about predictable um but you're you're welcome to to contact us about it if you want and as I said we do have that training session available um that sort of open open Office hours uh that you can

You can always book into too yeah I'm happy to to answer any questions either about seen and heard Pro or about um predictable wow those are some really neat features um I know that I have not heard uh from some of the other uh vendors that we've had on um

The range of access actually that you guys had I know you mentioned um face uh face tracking and um there was there was a company I one of the big companies like Microsoft or something like that that had done like the facial gesture um recognition to control some

Sort of a gaming unit uh and that was that was pretty wild and I haven't heard anybody else really talk about that so that's really neat yeah and I think it's I think it's and we're we're adding in more face gestures than we've had before in the update but you there's lots of

Lovely um things we can do where you can sort of create a recipe of a combination of face gestures so you could have blink blink blink equals um you know select on your scanning pattern if you if you know where you might have previously used a switch or you could have blink blink

Blink equal equals hello or it equals you know this message um and you know that can be a face gestures using eyebrows or it can be you know mouth based fa facial gestures as well eyebrow razes eye closes blinks and so on so there's quite a few uh combinations that are that are

Possible wow okay um and then the incorporation of chat GPT for communication I mean that's that's amazing I just think that's amazing yeah it's a really interesting one because we're trying to think about how to best do it because what's really important I think is that of course

Somebody needs to not not just automatically play whatever comes out of cat GPT but you might want to you know like if somebody says to you um oh what does the RC stand for and you know and I could ask C gbt and it give you a little

Blur and I can say Yes actually I want to say all of that or I want to say the first two lines and speak that aloud so still have agency over what I'm saying but it's probably you know I don't think it I think that's sort of how we're

Communicating now you know I'm often pulling up things and saying here's you know what's you know how do you make you know how do you you know how do you make a chocolate cake you know whatever it might be you know you can pull that up and have that really

Quickly and participate in a different way um where a longer message is is what you want to provide or a different type of message that is what you want to provide or you're not copying and pasting something from a Google search outside and bringing it into your app so

I don't know I don't know you know something new and I'm not sure how people will use it really be really interesting to to gather feedback once once we try that I know it's a a huge discussion here in Oregon about um having kids use AI in school just just in general I

Imagine it's not isolated here right it's all over the world I'm sure um so then just to incorporate that uh for everyone you know and making it inclusive is is amazing yeah exactly and there's lots of questions we don't have answers to and um you know we're not saying it's going

To people will generate their messages solely on that or you know people still have to have agency over what they're selecting and choosing but generally somebody and and it can be a feature that is turned off by if so for example the child was using it predictable it is

A feature that can be turned off and you know managed um as as for all the online features they can all be sort of um turned off um and password protected so that they're not accessing them um but for you know a lot of people who use predictable for example you know adults

Are are able to who have mental capacity to consent to to using it and have you know full you know want to have full access um then you know then they're able to to use it and it'll be really as I said interesting I we don't really

Know how people will use it um I'll be interested to to observe um and so both of these are on the iPad right and on Android as well yeah and and on Android okay um is there any uh any put push to get that on like a a

PC um for us I think we're we're happy to sort of stick to two be both to IOS and Android because um you know we're a small team and that means that we can uh keep a keep an eye on what we're doing and I think you know extending further

Out might be might be a risk for that makes sense um and I I see predictable like you said is available on the Smartwatch it will be yes the new SE for predictable seven so when you get it on your iPad or iPhone you can also use it

On the watch to to tap on messages on there as well okay that's very neat all right let's uh hey guys what kind of questions do you have about this program you guys know what you do way better than I do so Jump On In and and

Uh uh we do have in the folder um she did fill out the Matrix for you guys and then I will take that and transfer it into the master for you so that we we keep that updated um I'd love to I guess I I'd love to hear

About kind of like a real life example of you know how how seen and her in particular I think my kid um my daughter is on the Spectrum um she's she's 23 now but when she was younger I know um transitions were just such a difficult thing and uh new social environments and

Um I see like seen and heard and some other visual um AAC apps that's really like where I see those being used the best right um can you can you kind of talk about that a little bit Yeah and um when the original version came of seen and heard the old

Version came out in 2013 um again I think that was the the feedback that we've had over those S of 10 years and with the new version is that's exactly the sort of um uh place that it's being used or the opportunity where it's being used um for also sending information home between

School and home um for people to pop on uh um sort of social story type approach excuse me as well sorry and uh so it's it's really been something I think that parents have um have taken to um and the idea of building the scenes with the person who

Needs it I think is really important for having them choose where the hot spots go that the things that they want to talk about in the scene um is important um but yeah it's I mean there there are I've got a we've got a little udy course we've put out actually this

Last week and one of the things I do is go through 20 ideas for using it because as I said I think excuse me I think that's the challenge is you know have getting it in your hands they going oh okay I could try it for this and then having thinking

About ways you could use it on you know on the Fly um because it's not something you typically you know you need to prepare you know well in advance it might be as you know just before you start the activity or uh or add an activity but the next

Time that activity happens um you know if it's assumming every Tuesday maybe it's then making the the scene this this Tuesday for next Tuesday it's it's all about um you know trying to to to spot those opportunities I think all right um so I'm kind I'm looking at the The

Matrix and just kind of going through it a little bit um as far as Voice output it looks like you can pretty much do anything you want um and again the foreign languages that's amazing and I mean I don't use an AA seap but I'm thinking to myself like

I could use I could use that I could travel to another country and I could use that you know and translate into another language you have a whole new market there yeah there you go yeah no yeah we we as I said we're really Keen to try and open

Up um you know AC access to people whose first or second language isn't traditionally served by an AC app um and provide opportunities but also um you know I don't know I mean I live in London it's it's incredibly Multicultural and talk to people that

You know uh I had lunch today and people were you know chatting in Italian to the uh to the Barista uh you know it's it's you know people it's a very Cosmopolitan city um and people come in and out of languages all the time and um you know

We want to be able to support that sort of communication and not just not be so static and while it's not at the point where you can really code switch and you know blend in between your languages as as many people do we at least want to

Facilitate the ability to um you know have access to to the different voices and um be able to do them I know we do have a a large um Spanish-speaking population and um and sometimes that's their first language and sometimes that's just the language language that they speak at home and

They need to be able to go back and forth and so I don't um I don't I haven't noticed a whole lot of that being able to the translation part that's that's neat and I I could be wrong there could be lots of other apps that do that I'm not

Sure yeah no it's something we we feel quite passionate about and um uh the the the need I I think really you can't I mean if you're bilingual and you you get you get given an English a system then what do you use at you know you

Shouldn't I you know I think there's a really a right and responsibility to off you know to offer AC in any language you know I think you I I didn't know but in the UK for example a lot of our guidelines uh from our profession but uh from our Health Service and the

Education system are that you know you need to provide an an equitable and um accessible uh system so I I think it's not really just a nice to have it it's something that really we should all be um put you know provisioning uh Kim here says that uh

The visual scene displays have been great for adults with acquired communication disabilities poststroke yes I think I I think that's that's a that's a great Point um I know we're we're all education based and and we're we usually are dealing with kids but I know that um as we as we get older

Our our parents and and whatnot are have these sorts of issues and grandparents my father had a stroke in this last year and so yeah that would definitely be something that we might use my sister is a as a preschool teacher and so one of our conversations poststroke

Was let's get him an AAC device let's let's get that in there um and get it set up so that he can start start talking to us again right y yeah and you know and that's when we started the business too it's one of our

You know I think that AC needs to be accessible in the in the sense of it being easily accessed by families and affordable and and you know for people to be able to go and sort things out themselves you know when we live in the UK we're fortunate our Health Service

Will will should provide for for for that but you know uh it's not always the case and so uh you're right being able to go and have an AC app easily available for someone you know after a stroke or um for you know to families should also have you know some ability

To be able to access that themselves I think uh and then Kelly's typed in here that visual scenes are also used widely in early intervention yes of course yeah with emergent communicators of all ages and in the past five years growing research at OHSU Melanie fried Oaken and out of

University of Nebraska for using visual scene displays with poststroke Aphasia and dementia yeah yeah and I think that's really key is that it's really a lot an opportunity acoss the lifespan to introduce visual scenes and um it's you know there's there's loads of work particularly in the area of

Aasia but also conversation support people with with dementia um and I think some of the work that Janice light's done that the children are as young as two uh in her studies looking at using visual scene displays effectively um which yeah so there's lots of lovely

Research in in that area and happy to to to share some references um if that's useful uh and then Kelly mentioned that the the companies outside of the US are more focused on multiple languages than we are here which I find funny since we're like a Melting Pot

Right yeah it's interesting isn't it I don't know either um but the you I mean I don't know maybe living in London it feel it's it's incredibly um Multicultural um and so so it's certainly a big push here um and it's been as I said I think there's there's

Guidelines and policies around uh provisioning in these languages and a big big push I don't know about Australia either you know which is where I'm from whether there's such a push perhaps not but um here they're definitely is I know that in March we

Will have a um a rep on from of O and they're based in India and and they also have a large um offering of languages and so yeah they do don't they yeah that's true yeah it's kind of a big Focus all right um Rebecca this is Kim

Again I have more of a a boring logistical question not um very love it um just uh one other um person from the atlbb team that I'm part of is here but i' love for the whole team to actually dig in a little more with some of these

Features is it best just to go to your website and do that book a training if we wanted to just yeah have a little team walk through of some of these new features definitely and you can um yeah we can set up a time that suits your

Team if that if the time on the website doesn't suit just uh message me and I can we can find a good time for you to do that okay is and is your are you the one who interfaces with that training schedule normally yeah normally yeah

Thank you yeah or you can try our new udy course that when when he went out this week um but that's uh you even you get a little you know it's a 45 minute introduction to scene and her Pro and we go through it in quite a lot of detail

If you want to try that as well which which one is that did you say on udemy which is you know like a platform for delivering courses and it um uh we have a little course there the reason is there actually because we saw AZ had a

Course on there too thought oh that's a good idea so we've put out we've put one out on there as well so um I I can um provide the link later if that's useful thank you I know my my ESD just um signed us the whole or organization up for you to

Me so I'm going to go check that out okay yeah that'll be interesting um so as far as trainings on your website do you have just kind of some readymade videos that are easily accessed yeah there's loads of stuff on on our YouTube channel um and on the

Website um and yeah we try to keep those fairly up to dat so yeah know they're they're readily available people can access them as and when okay excellent Um let's see what else do we have here the eye gaze so you have a a question mark next to eye gaze for seen and heard Pro what's so um I think in theory it should all work fine we just we haven't done a great deal of testing on it so I just

Didn't want to um okay declare it a fully fully baked solution but yeah absolutely uh there's no reason why it wouldn't in our um testing so far it's worked well but um it's not been something that we've tested to the degree we have for predictable but uh you should be able to

Use it with both of the current um eye tracking cameras that apple have approved so that should both they should be fine and actually works probably it works actually quite nicely because you've got the big hot spots that as your target target areas so they could

Be you know half the screen each if you wanted to have two really large um uh target areas for for ey tracking that would be that would work nicely actually okay so I'm looking through the access uh part for seen and heard and so there's it's there's a Bluetooth

Connection and you can use a head mouse and a joystick um so is it is it mostly a touchbased yeah okay I think really both of the apps are primarily designed first for people using them as touchbased uh apps um but whereever possible we've either worked within the

Frameworks of of those devices so the operating system accessibility setup um and where that's not been possible we we've created our own um uh set up within the apps to be able to use um arrange of access modes and we have we have features in predictable for example

Um that help accommodate for for touchscreen users that might have Tremor or um perseveration like you know locking out the screen for set time so you that you know that they can um avoid Mish hits um so yeah wherever possible we've tried to um design it to be a

Touchcreen at First Step which is how we understand 95% of of people use it based on our observations okay okay so no switches for the seen and heard um I think probably it would work within Apple's um switch framework um it would it would their normal um accessibility settings with switches

SE heard work but it hasn't we haven't optimized it like we have predictable where we've built our own sort of in inapp scanning and to accommodate for the keyboard and um yeah but I'm sure you can still use it with uh switch access for seen and

Heard okay that makes sense and so the the best way to get um support from you guys is email is that if you need to contact somebody yeah and we have U we have live chat on our website too so if it's within the pro you know until 5:00 most

So about now um uh most days there's someone online but you can also leave a comment on the webs on our online chat and if we're offline um someone will pick it up in the the UK uh next day in the morning and get back to you um but

We as I said we have this open you know slot every day where we can also troubl shoot um or you know you know walk you through things if if need be okay um and then you you had kind of given me a list of like bonus features

Right that I didn't have on The Matrix and I know that you talked a little bit about those um but I was not familiar with all of them and so I just want to mention them because I don't I want to make sure that everybody else hears about them as well um

So the transition to literacy I know you mentioned that uh feature which was neat I hadn't seen that previously um the video visual scenes uh the use of uh AI generative Ai and I assume you're talking about the chat GPT y integration yeah exactly okay which again I think is so

Cool um we have the translation feature we've talked about that a bunch because that is really neat um handwriting input and maybe I missed it but um yeah I didn't mention that that's right so um for predictable instead of a key the keyboard or you can switch from the

Keyboard to a notepad on the screen and you with your finger you can write and it will um trigger the word prediction that way okay okay um I know my my phone does that like I can write on my phone and it and it it is surprisingly accurate I have decent handwriting

Though I don't I don't know that it would work so well for one of my kiddos uh okay head tracking input now is that um that it will just track your head right like you don't need a head mouse or something like that on no exactly yeah know it just tracks um your

Um head movements um using the camera on the iPad itself um needs to be one of the newer iPads and we and if you're not sure we can always check let you know which iPads at at the time if you're if you're wondering um so yeah but you can

Move and you can use that in in combination with those face gestures I mentioned so you could move around with your head and then blink to select for example um on the cell that you wanted okay so using those together okay that that's good yeah um so you have in

Here floor holding what does that mean yeah so floor holding is a a lovely feature in predictable um where you can set up um a series of little messages to keep your turn so um for example might be um just a minute or I'm still typing um and they either play

When you Tap a button on the keyboard or they can play after a predetermined uh duration after you start typing so if typing is quite laborious um and people are at risk of um interrupting you or wandering off um then these messages can help you keep

Your turn um and um keep the attention of your communication partner okay uh you know last year we we had a focus on communication partners and how to be a good communication partner and so so important that really is so important to remind people right that it's going to take a little longer

Than you're used to right exactly yeah I know it's a um for me it's an area that's um really important and um the and finding ways to try to reduce Communication Breakdown uh and then ways to repair it if it does happen uh it's something personally I'm I'm super interested in um

And there's actually there's loads of when the UK went there's loads of research going into that area in general in the field of speech and language therapy but also within the a field so I think it's something that we're all thinking about a bit more um in terms of uh reducing communication

Breakdown and and fixing and repairing when it when it happens um I I think it's I think and Kim you can tell me um if this is correct I believe it was you guys that offered a communication Partners like training for companies and then you had

Like a like a plaque that you could put up that told people that your staff had been trained in how to be good communication partners for for people I think are you are you yeah are you thinking about the communication accessibility yeah yes yes yeah so we're

Um yeah Rebecca might know about this because that sort of grew out of Australia originally and I think is done in the UK and Canada it's more that we're trying to promote it here in the US um okay that's our dream is to get it here yeah yeah yeah no yeah loads of

Organizations have done it here you know even I see it some I sometimes see the sticker on B on Banks and public services that they've done this communication access training I think it's it's called or something like that isn't it yeah and I see the logo um yeah

And I think and there's a big push here on communication partner training here um seems to be it seems to be a big push post especially for people post stroke and and people with dementia and um that's a um a big area of interest for me personally as

Well yeah it's sort of our it's kind of my personal bandw soap soap box so I don't know we we all need to band together and try to get some traction here in the United States for it yeah does anybody else have any questions we have a few minutes left

Um I know there are so so so many different features and it is just impossible to to go through all of the all of the possibilities um and I think that you've pretty much answered all of my my typical questions um so yay you

Great I can go and have a glass of wine that it's late enough in the day oh yes right It's Five O'Clock there now right okay it's fine can can switch off that's awesome um are there are there any any other things that we can look forward to seeing from therapy

Box um no I think projectable 7 as I said we're hoping it'll debut debut at um Atia in Orlando in at the end of January so that's exciting are you going to be there I I don't know if it'll be me coming this time but one of us will

Be what be there um uh so we'll see um and yeah I know we've got some of our collaborative research projects are still early days in the UK so nothing nothing um nothing else in the in the near future that um but predictable seven is is is um the big one for now

Okay well I look forward to seeing whoever it is that shows up uh Deb and I will both be there great good that's ex if it's not me I'll let my colleagues know yeah we'll stop by and and talk to you guys perfect yeah um all right

Well if nobody has anything else I think we can probably wrap up for the day um thank you so much Rebecca for joining us

source

What do you think?

Written by OTAP-RSOI

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

* Checkbox GDPR is required

*

I agree

Committee Debate: How Devolution is Changing Post-EU – 9 January 20244

Committee Debate: How Devolution is Changing Post-EU – 9 January 20244

12.7.23 AEM and Universal Tools for Transition with Sarah Statham and Lon Thornberg

12.7.23 AEM and Universal Tools for Transition with Sarah Statham and Lon Thornberg