CAA e 4Co: opportunità didattiche della comunicazione aumentativa e alternativa su dispositivi mobili

Abstract

AAC and 4Co: Educational Opportunities of the Augmentative and Alternative Communication on Mobile Devices

In this paper we present an experience of the application of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) with four persons with severe language and motor impairments. Two applications (apps) on Android tablets were tried with one subject who had negatively experienced traditional communication boards at school and with three subjects who had never been considered before for AAC intervention. After a six-month trial, based on the co-construction of a personalized communication table with each of the four subjects, we achieved encouraging results: the ease of use of the proposed instruments enabled the persons involved in the experimentation to improve their communication capabilities, to better express their choices and feelings, and to extend their communication circles. These results show that AAC can be successfully applied to severe disabilities and encourages research in this direction. The experience, which is in progress in other contexts and with other pathologies, was heavily time-consuming with reference to the efforts required by the personalized development phase. For the future, we propose a mix of universal design and personalization so that the resulting tools can be regarded as convenient, competent, consonant and contextual.