AAC-RERC Themes

Usability, Learnability, and Acceptance of AAC Technology

The AAC field has made considerable progress in technology development and service delivery; however, much remains to be done so that persons with the most severe communication disabilities can be effective, efficient, independent communicators. Communication rate and efficiency remain important concerns of the AAC consumer community. A commonly reported problem is the learning load that current AAC technology places on AAC users and their family members/ caregivers. Human factors work is needed that systematically investigates the usability and learnability of current AAC technologies and suggests improvements in the way that people interact using AAC technologies to carry out their social roles. Work under this theme will benefit all AAC users in that it addresses the need to provide AAC technologies that interface more seamlessly with other information technologies and that are easier to use and learn.

The following projects are associated with this theme:

• R1-C: Specialized AAC Vocabulary Research
• R2-A: Contextual Scenes for Beginning Communicators
• R2-B: Contextual Scenes for Adults with Aphasia
• R2-C: Contextual Scenes and Intelligent Agents for Persons with Autism
• R3-A: Improving Interface Performance Efficiency between AAC/IT Systems
• R3-B: Communication Performance Assessment: Monitoring/Simulating AAC
• D1-A: Technology and Policy Watch
• D2-A: AAC Technology to Supplement Intelligibility of Residual Speech
• D2-B: Recognition of Dysarthric Speech
• D2-C: Gesture Recognition
• D2-D: Brain Interface
• D3-A: AAC WebCrawling-Communication Content from the Internet