Showing posts with label Tobii. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tobii. Show all posts
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Eyegaze for Education: Women and Girls with Rett Syndrome
Many thanks to the Rett Syndrome Association Massachusetts for hosting me for this presentation.
Also thank you to everyone who watched the live broadcast of this workshop on Ustream.TV!
I apologize for the technical difficulties. It was a first time thing, broadcasting a workshop and I learned a lot.
Ingrid Harding of Girl Power 2 Cure taped (most) of the broadcast, which is seen below.
Please comment and let me know if you saw the broadcast! (I never saw the social stream.)
Friday, February 25, 2011
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Things you never thought you would say...
Six months later he was hanging out in his kitchen with a friend, blasting Shania Twain on his iTunes, through her Tobii.
"That's too loud; turn it down!" his mother told him. Like any other teen would he turned it down, but just a little.
One of the best gifts of AAC and accessible environmental control is a chance to be like any other kid. Not to mention the chance for a parent to be like any other parent.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Tobii Tales from the Field
As promised here are some stories of our first week with the Tobii P10 in our classroom.
Our student is currently using a 12 location board with care take to have yes, no and go back in the same location on each board (like nearly all students she is a very motor memory based communicator). The first few days of the trial we did not add any new boards inspite of some student nagging, "I am frustrated. What I want to say is not here!" I (the teacher) did lots of explaining around that both things are true, that she is frustrated because she is learning all the new boards, which is very hard work, and how to link between them, while at the same time she does have messages for all she wants to say. By the end of the first week we were seeing some spontaneously linking between pages and some humor, which we expected with this student. The linking however was more difficult to predict as it is hard to know how linking will go on an eye gaze device because there are very few ways to emulate dynamic display. Something else we heard a lot of in those early days was, "I can't see!" Our only answer to that was, "Sorry about that, the loaner P10 is huge, your C-eye will be smaller when you get it." (And so our user can protest!)
As we enter our second week we are seeing more linking and more humor. For example, today we played a game in speech therapy group in which the prize was a lollypop. Our Tobii user won. Later in the day we did a little scrapbooking and after our Tobii user was finished her scrapbooking page (having made some nice choices with her Tobii); I moved on to assisting another student. As far as I knew the Tobii user was still on the art page. Then I heard, "Can I taste that?" (A message only on the cooking page as this student does not generally eat by mouth. Thus the student had navigated several layers to get to the message.) I laughed and told my Tobii friend that it was paper. Again I heard, "Can I taste that?" I glanced over and saw her shift her gaze to the lollypop from earlier, back in its wrapper on the table. I gave her a taste. We then enjoyed a fun game of me returning to the other student only to be summoned with, "Can I taste that?", the moment I would start assisting that student. It was pretty funny. (And so our user can request! And tease.)
We finished up a little early today (when does that happen? I mean seriously? we finished early?) and read a book before dismissal. It was a rhyming book that built on itself along the lines of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" but with more acrobatics for the tongue. At some point my tongue got tangled. Without missing a beat my Tobii user said, "You're funny!" (And so our user can comment!)
Thus, as you can read, our user is phenomanal (I like the term "rock star"). The Tobii is also pretty cool. The eye gaze is quite amazing. We have super accuracy when the user is in her stander. Our user also likes to move around a lot, especially forward and back in her chair and the Tobii works fine. We did have some issues with our user having trouble accessing the top row of the Tobii while in her wheelchair. After days of this the only thing that worked to fix it was adjusting her headrest. Logically adjusting the Tobii should have worked, but it turned out the user really needed more room to move her head back. Battery life is another small problem we are having. This will not be an issue on the Tobii C-eye which has hot swap batteries, but the P10 has a 13 pound "portable" (depending on your definition of portable) which makes it not quite six hours. Sadly the school day is six hours. So there is some time when our user is without communication. There are also three bugs (so far) that we are having with the software. The first is that sometimes the eye tracking will be working fine in the "Tobii Desktop" but not in the "Communicator" software. Meaning we have to shut down Communicator and re-open it. Annoying but no big deal. A bigger deal is that for some reason when we attempt to import some files we get a "Out of Memory" message on the Tobii. This when there is some 26+ Gigs of memory available. This can be problematic when we have put a lot of effort into making something and it can't be imported. Tech support has had no answers for us. Finally there has been an issue with the fact that there are multiple places in Communicator to make buttons do the same thing. Thus it is possible to "send mixed messages". So if in one of the places you tell a button to do the action "go back" and in another you tell it to "go to page named MAIN" then the button will not work. Annoying. Tobii should fix that.
That being said, excepting those bugs, Communicator is 100 times easier to program than any other communication software I have ever used (and I have used Boardmaker SDP, Dynavox 2c-V, Chat-PC, Enkidu, Talking Box, Gus, Tango, Word+ and more). So don't get the wrong idea.
However, Tobii is sorely lacking a sharing community for Communicator. They really need to get on this! Granted Tango and Dynavox, among others are lacking in this area, but Boardmaker really shines and Communicator could really be something is sharing was happening! Also they should get some books into the Accessible Book Collection in Communictor (.cdd) format.
Our student is currently using a 12 location board with care take to have yes, no and go back in the same location on each board (like nearly all students she is a very motor memory based communicator). The first few days of the trial we did not add any new boards inspite of some student nagging, "I am frustrated. What I want to say is not here!" I (the teacher) did lots of explaining around that both things are true, that she is frustrated because she is learning all the new boards, which is very hard work, and how to link between them, while at the same time she does have messages for all she wants to say. By the end of the first week we were seeing some spontaneously linking between pages and some humor, which we expected with this student. The linking however was more difficult to predict as it is hard to know how linking will go on an eye gaze device because there are very few ways to emulate dynamic display. Something else we heard a lot of in those early days was, "I can't see!" Our only answer to that was, "Sorry about that, the loaner P10 is huge, your C-eye will be smaller when you get it." (And so our user can protest!)
As we enter our second week we are seeing more linking and more humor. For example, today we played a game in speech therapy group in which the prize was a lollypop. Our Tobii user won. Later in the day we did a little scrapbooking and after our Tobii user was finished her scrapbooking page (having made some nice choices with her Tobii); I moved on to assisting another student. As far as I knew the Tobii user was still on the art page. Then I heard, "Can I taste that?" (A message only on the cooking page as this student does not generally eat by mouth. Thus the student had navigated several layers to get to the message.) I laughed and told my Tobii friend that it was paper. Again I heard, "Can I taste that?" I glanced over and saw her shift her gaze to the lollypop from earlier, back in its wrapper on the table. I gave her a taste. We then enjoyed a fun game of me returning to the other student only to be summoned with, "Can I taste that?", the moment I would start assisting that student. It was pretty funny. (And so our user can request! And tease.)
We finished up a little early today (when does that happen? I mean seriously? we finished early?) and read a book before dismissal. It was a rhyming book that built on itself along the lines of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" but with more acrobatics for the tongue. At some point my tongue got tangled. Without missing a beat my Tobii user said, "You're funny!" (And so our user can comment!)
Thus, as you can read, our user is phenomanal (I like the term "rock star"). The Tobii is also pretty cool. The eye gaze is quite amazing. We have super accuracy when the user is in her stander. Our user also likes to move around a lot, especially forward and back in her chair and the Tobii works fine. We did have some issues with our user having trouble accessing the top row of the Tobii while in her wheelchair. After days of this the only thing that worked to fix it was adjusting her headrest. Logically adjusting the Tobii should have worked, but it turned out the user really needed more room to move her head back. Battery life is another small problem we are having. This will not be an issue on the Tobii C-eye which has hot swap batteries, but the P10 has a 13 pound "portable" (depending on your definition of portable) which makes it not quite six hours. Sadly the school day is six hours. So there is some time when our user is without communication. There are also three bugs (so far) that we are having with the software. The first is that sometimes the eye tracking will be working fine in the "Tobii Desktop" but not in the "Communicator" software. Meaning we have to shut down Communicator and re-open it. Annoying but no big deal. A bigger deal is that for some reason when we attempt to import some files we get a "Out of Memory" message on the Tobii. This when there is some 26+ Gigs of memory available. This can be problematic when we have put a lot of effort into making something and it can't be imported. Tech support has had no answers for us. Finally there has been an issue with the fact that there are multiple places in Communicator to make buttons do the same thing. Thus it is possible to "send mixed messages". So if in one of the places you tell a button to do the action "go back" and in another you tell it to "go to page named MAIN" then the button will not work. Annoying. Tobii should fix that.
That being said, excepting those bugs, Communicator is 100 times easier to program than any other communication software I have ever used (and I have used Boardmaker SDP, Dynavox 2c-V, Chat-PC, Enkidu, Talking Box, Gus, Tango, Word+ and more). So don't get the wrong idea.
However, Tobii is sorely lacking a sharing community for Communicator. They really need to get on this! Granted Tango and Dynavox, among others are lacking in this area, but Boardmaker really shines and Communicator could really be something is sharing was happening! Also they should get some books into the Accessible Book Collection in Communictor (.cdd) format.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Looking at the Tobii C-Eye
Over the past four months I have had the wonderful opportunity to explore a number of eye tracking communication devices with one of my students and her family as we move through the process of selection. Just yesterday we met with our wonderful Tobii rep, Chris, to try out the Tobii C-Eye. About nine months before Chris had visited and my student tried out the Tobii P-10, which is also an eye gaze device. Since then she has trialled essentially every eye gaze device on the market (the Eyemax, the Erica (now owned by Dynavox) and the Eco). The trial was a joy from the word go. Some of the things that made it wonderful were that the user knew what to expect from calibration and for the first time was able to calibrate a device, she had been exposed to the board sets because we had been sent a trial copy of the Tobii Communicator Software to look at and we use SymbolStix (the picture symbols on the Tobii) everyday. Also our rep was able to both engage the user and answer the question of the SLP, myself and the family at the same time (that takes some doing). Additionally the student was able to keep on her bifocal glasses, which she was unable to do in any other device trial. Also we were able to remove her chest strap and give her the freedom to move backwards and forwards in space and access still wasn't and issue. The best part of the trial, by far, was when at the very end the TEAM started chatting and the user was left to explore (sort of by accident). So she launched an American Idol video in Windows Media Player! We were stunned and she laughed!
Beyond the trial the Tobii Communicator software really is a joy to use. I am such an "old timer" at Boardmaker Speaking Dynamically Pro and at some of the other devices at the market that sometimes I have a hardtime rewiring my brain to do new devices, however the Tobii is a breeze. It converted all sorts of Boardmaker SDP files over no problem (except it doesn't drag and drop - although none of my boards do that since none of my students do that). You can do all the fancy things you can do in other programs from shuffle to stretch to instantly resize and often times without hitting as many buttons as you need to in other software programs. I am excited to be running a trial of an AAC device for a student on a program that is so easy to learn to use.
Tobii is a local company for us, just a few towns over, which makes arranging the next step of our journey towards an eye gaze AAC device for this user a little easier (renting a device to collect some data) as there is no shipping involved. It will take about 30 minutes for someone to go pick up the trial device once our name comes up on the waiting list. Hopefully our user will have one of her own soon!
Apologies to Chris for calling him Brian in the frist version of this post... someday I will get better at names! Chris is one of the best AAC Vendor reps I have worked with.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Tobii ATI Retires Mercury/Mini-Merc
Tobii ATI has announced the retirement of the Mercury/Mini-Merc series of AAC devices. The Mercury/Mini-Merc has been phased out for the new Tobii ATI C-Series and Sono devices.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Tobii ATI C Series
I am very excited to announce the new Tobii ATI C series of
communication devices, if for no other reason that an AAC company has finally put hot swap batteries in their new AAC device. Hot swap batteries, the ability to change batteries while the device is running instead of having to plug the device in is as close to a "deal breaker" as I can come when I am looking at at a device without a student in mind. Hot swap batteries means a student can go into the community, on field trips or to work without worries of "running out of juice" and either being voiceless or being tethered by their AC adapter.
The C series devices run on the Tobii Communicator software, which I have not seen, and is capable of recorded or digitized speech and can be used for text or symbol based communication. The symbols used are SymbolStix (from the News-2You people, about 15,000 symbols). It doesn't say if there is an option to use other symbols such as Boardmaker. Otherwise the devices seem to be comparable to other devices on the market. The C8 is smaller and the C12 larger weighing in at 4 and 6.5 pounds. You can add premium features like text messaging, e-mail and the internet to the software if you wish. There are the usual multiple means of access including touch screen and switches. You can also add the eye gaze control that Tobii is most famous for (meaning that there is now eyegaze avaliable from every major AAC company - Tobii ATI, PRC and Dynavox). The C series is compatiable with all of the major mounting devices. You can personalize the style of the C series by changing the side panels to different colors.
Considering the Tobii ATI company (or part of it) is located in my home state perhaps I will get a chance to give you all more information soon.
communication devices, if for no other reason that an AAC company has finally put hot swap batteries in their new AAC device. Hot swap batteries, the ability to change batteries while the device is running instead of having to plug the device in is as close to a "deal breaker" as I can come when I am looking at at a device without a student in mind. Hot swap batteries means a student can go into the community, on field trips or to work without worries of "running out of juice" and either being voiceless or being tethered by their AC adapter.The C series devices run on the Tobii Communicator software, which I have not seen, and is capable of recorded or digitized speech and can be used for text or symbol based communication. The symbols used are SymbolStix (from the News-2You people, about 15,000 symbols). It doesn't say if there is an option to use other symbols such as Boardmaker. Otherwise the devices seem to be comparable to other devices on the market. The C8 is smaller and the C12 larger weighing in at 4 and 6.5 pounds. You can add premium features like text messaging, e-mail and the internet to the software if you wish. There are the usual multiple means of access including touch screen and switches. You can also add the eye gaze control that Tobii is most famous for (meaning that there is now eyegaze avaliable from every major AAC company - Tobii ATI, PRC and Dynavox). The C series is compatiable with all of the major mounting devices. You can personalize the style of the C series by changing the side panels to different colors.
Considering the Tobii ATI company (or part of it) is located in my home state perhaps I will get a chance to give you all more information soon.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Press Release from TObii and Assitive Technology, Inc. - About Their Merger
The following is the full text of
the Tobii and Assistive Technology, Inc (makers of the Mercury and Mini-Merc AAC Devices) press release:
Stockholm, Sweden, and Boston,
MA, USA
January 8, 2008
Eye tracking world leader Tobii Technology and Assistive Technology Inc. (ATI) are today announcing that they are joining forces to become a leading vendor of high-tech communication solutions for the disability market, so called augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) solutions.
Tobii and ATI have agreed on joining forces to strengthen their position in the American market. The name of the new company is Tobii Assistive Technology, Inc. (Tobii ATI) and it is a US based, fully owned subsidiary of Tobii Technology AB, with its corporate office in Boston, MA.
Tobii ATI will offer a complete range of AAC devices and communication solutions for users with disabilities, including MyTobii - the market leading eye controlled device from Tobii, Mercury, MiniMerc, L*E*O, LinkCLASSIC and LinkPLUS from ATI and the communication software VS Communicator from Viking Software. Tobii ATI will offer customer service and support on the entire product range.
"ATI has an unparalleled experience in the US assistive technology market, a highly experienced sales staff and the very best customer support organization. Combined with Tobii's strong R&D and innovative solutions we can continue to grow and to offer the best solutions to end users, therapists and care givers." says Henrik Eskilsson, CEO at Tobii Technology.
"Tobii offers the best in the class of R&D with the financial resources to reach the top. This, combined with their commitment to increase the benefit of the user will solidify an exceptional product offering in the future." says Tara Rudnicki, ATI's President and COO.
The market for communication solutions for people with disabilities is growing rapidly. Computerized communicating devices allow people with limited communication abilities to talk, chat, browse the Internet, and much more.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Contact Me at:
Visit our advertisers:
