Sunday, February 18, 2007

Another AAC/AT Fieldtrip - The Netherlands

Okay, fellow geeks and geekettes, let's go on another international AAC seeking adventure, this time to the Netherlands. This trip is brought to us by Sclera Pictograms, which I have started to use exclusively for one of my students with low vision. I was unable to find any body part symbols in the English Sclera Collection, so I downloaded the Dutch collection. Still having found no bright white on black body part pictograms I went on a grand tour of Dutch AAC. Here is what I found.

Visitaal Pictogrammen is a Boardmaker version 3.1 or so-esque black-on-white symbol system. They offer not only the symbols (with free downloads of new symbols-oh, Mayer-Johnson when will you catch on?), but ready made picture symbol communication cards, greeting crads and games software as well.

Some other Dutch symbol systems are BeTa, which incorporates computer drawn images with Bliss symbols and color pictograms. Pictobrief which has black and white line drawings. Pictomaat which is also offer black and white line drawings, but also offers schedule making materials and will custom make communication books.

Pictogenda seems to be an extraordinarily cool product. Series of products. They include a symbols based day planner system complete with pictogram stickers (they seem to love their white on black pictograms in The Netherlands), a series of workbooks about various kinds of big schedule changes like trips to the hospital or vacations, and a disk that will print out more pictograms for use with either or with something else entirely. These are some very enticing products.

Most of the higher tech communication products I saw online were the same as available in the USA. I saw plenty of AMDI, Enabling Devices, Assistive Technology Inc. and and Ablenet Products. I also saw this TouchSpeak handheld, which I have never seen before. If anyone knows the designer please comment.


This joystick is called the Funkey Joystick. (Google wanted me to call it the Funky Joystick.) It is a Dutch invention and hard to find outside of the EU. It is an oversized, easy-to-use mouse emulator joystick with four built in switches. Quite cool looking, if you ask me.

There is quite a bit more, but that is all for tonight


1 comment:

  1. The Great Talking Box Company will be marketing Touchspeak in the US. We are just in the process of choosing the PDA/Phone to use and experimenting with speakers. If you Google Touchspeak you will find my blog which will start to comment on our Touchspeak adventure.

    Davd

    ReplyDelete

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