WWAAC - World Wide Augmentative and Alternative Communication (4)

Project objective(s)

The ultimate goal of the project is to make the electronic highway more accessible for a wide range of persons with language and/or cognitive impairments.

In the context of these users the project addresses the development and early implementation of:

• Preliminary standards for syntax and semantic text/message encoding

• tools for text support: i.e. message conversion among symbols and text, with speech output

• tools for task support i.e. for web navigation and mail box handling

• guidelines and tools for information presentation on the web to people with cognitive, motor and/or language disorders

In close co-operation with a wide but carefully selected User Platform, and with a limited amount of applied research but substantial innovative technology development, existing knowledge and technology from a range of related projects will lead, through WWAAC, to commercially attractive and close-to-market products. Standards will be proposed in co-operation with W3C, WAI, ISO, European ICT and Nordic bodies for standardisation in the field of Disabled and Elderly people.

Once the project objectives have been met and its software developed, several activities will become accessible to symbol users and elderly people with language disorders over the Internet. Each of these modules will have an appropriate user interface, including support for information management such as E-mail-addressing and navigation routes. Upon successful classification of a concept set, this will be promoted for adoption by relevant bodies as a standard for alternative message encoding, thereby offering the possibilities for enhancing web-sites for AAC users. A tool for web authoring is also planned in the project.

Both the world-wide-Internet and organisation-wide-Intranets currently require the user’s ability to use text (traditional orthography). Without reading and/or writing text, correctly spelling email addresses etc., none of these Information Technology services widely available in our society can be used without adaptation.

The situation is particularly difficult and poorly supported for persons with multiple impairment, caused by congenital or acquired brain injury, including deficits in: impressive and/or expressive language, motor function (including speech), perception (interpretation and integration of sensory input), concentration and orientation, memory and general cognitive capacity.

The WWAAC project will concentrate on the development of software tools and products that will substantially improve the access to Internet services for this group of people, with a specific focus on language and communication. In order to achieve this, several accomplishments are necessary:

1. Classifying a set of fundamental symbol language concepts (keywords) that can be used for primary message encoding and mechanisms related to this, covering at least three symbol systems and implicitly all European languages,

2. Developing a methodology for conversion of text messages, based on a defined number of keywords (2000-4000), to corresponding text or symbols for basic communication,

3. Investigating and proposing a convention to enhance web-pages to enable access to them for non-readers,

4. Designing and implementing task-support systems for accessing Internet and/or Intranet services, including the management of addressing, navigation/orientation, message retrieval and production - all with configurable text, speech, sound and graphic symbol support,

5. Investigating, applying and testing ways to exploit the new condensed formats for information and service provision for small mobile devices (based on WAP, XML, CSS, XSL and related standards) in the interest of language impaired users,

6. Packaging the unique developments of this project in a set of re-usable software components that can be readily integrated with other existing and future assistive software components ,

7. Producing a suite of programs which integrate the new functional components of this project with other assistive components (e.g. for alternative input methods for severely motor impaired) into a very supportive Internet Access Pack for language impaired users with a very simplistic and configurable user interface

8. Involving end users at all stages in testing and user-evaluation to ensure a practically acceptable and usable, attractive and exploitable products.

By bringing the various elements together, a new standard in AAC Internet software components will be set, which is innovative from many points of view. This is a challenging task, but, given the quality and experience of the project partners, it is a feasible task and good outcomes are anticipated.