Integrated Visual Assistance

[ysabetwordsmith]

While researching a poem, I found this page about the Holocaust.  Scroll down, and below the main article in brown there is a little red box with a thumbnail summary including illustrative icons.  If you just read the highlighted keywords and their icons, you get "holocaust, systematic, state-sponsored, six million Jews, Nazi."  That's a brilliant nutshell for people who may not be verbal or fluent in English.  While I rarely see it in local-America outside of resources designed for people with special needs, it's quite common in Terramagne, although it usually appears above the main article to serve as a quick introduction.

Comments

[technoshaman]

Cool! Too bad DW won't let you do that.... it would be... tricksy to implement, but if you were designing a system from scratch...

Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Exactly the problem. In T-America you can just get a module that lets you insert AAC icons or other small images. Storyboards or chat programs that use such icons are ubiquitous; you can find free online or offline ones that are quite good. Here, almost everything that actually works is behind very expensive paywalls.

We really need somegeek to make some good open-source versions of this stuff with customizable dictionaries so that artists can add illustrations as needed.

Re: Yes...

[technoshaman]

I wonder if mdlbear knows any UX (sorry, that's User eXperience) designers... he's a dev, but strictly backend.

Re: Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith]

I don't know.

I think what's needed for optimum results would be a team of programmers and artists, with input from folks who use icon communication and folks who are good communicators.

Me, I can describe how these work and how they look. The first versions of the public stuff don't have to be as elaborate as the therapeutic ones. Mostly what you need is a simple interface that lets you customize a dictionary of symbols, type text, drag-and-drop icons into a window to create messages, then save and send those messages. You might need to support multiple file formats. I suspect the challenging part will be making a database to handle all the icons, but that sort of thing exists in many forms already, so it can be done.

Re: Yes...

[thnidu]

That would be Augmentative and Alternative Communication, not any of the other "AAC"s that turned up in a research.