Hi All
It is all very interesting. On Radio5 they had someone from the research team and a neurologist. It was mentioned about the prosthetic view and the neurologist in response to this said that this was a long way off and also highlighted that communation aids have made huge technological advances including being operated by people using their eyes. I felt that this did balance the discussion a little more and was a good little mention of AAC.

Yes I am under no illusion that this will provide the "magic wand" for
people without speech!
I was more just broadly interested in the fact that they say they have
begun to identify areas of the brain where specific words are formed....
In fact when my son was young, and to a certain extent still today, I

Hi Jenny,
I heard this too and did find it very interesting, but I don't like the raising of expectation that quotes such as ""From a prosthetic view, people who have speech disorders... could possibly have a prosthetic device when they can't speak but they can imagine what they want to say,""
I know it was probably 'mediaised' (though I heard him say an almost identical thing on R4 this morning - guess which AAC user he quoted?!). The paper/work [1] is not aimed at trying to decode speech per-se, but to better understand the processing of speech (in) within the brain. It seems very interesting in this respect, but he does seem to be overplaying it's potential to the media (in my humble opinion).

Thanks to Jenny for the link. A couple of resources if this is more than a passing interest to anyone:
1) The whole-to-part model of reading that Karen Erickson and I use for literacy instruction and assessment includes inner speech
2) Dahlgren Sandberg has some work that found when speaking folks say a word AAC users are more successful spelling it than when they see a picture and try to spell the word it represents (they pretested to make sure the AAC users knew what the pictures were)

This looks quite interesting and ties in with my son's frequent
inability to correctly spell out a word that he has not heard said out
loud by someone else (implying that he cannot "hear" it in his own head)
This seems particularly to apply to "b" and "d"...but can also be
quite random and surprising!

Communication Matters are undertaking some lobbying activities to maximise
the impact of the latest report from Jean Gross the Communication Champion.

We would welcome your personal support be you a user of a Communication aid
a professional or a commercial member.

There are a couple of ways you can help us :

Hi Guys,
I am just trying to find out how many AAC user have been to University. Is
it common to have AAC at University? If not, why not?
Thanks,
Lazy ex-student awaiting her results.

I have just looked at the self checker scoring test and am pretty
horrified to see how unimportant lack of speech is seen to be..
"7a. Can communicate unaided and access written information unaided, or
using spectacles or contact lenses. 0 points
7 b. Needs to use an aid or appliance other than spectacles or contact

Friday Announcements - 27 January 2012
CONTENTS
1. Saltillo Becomes a Member of Communication Matters
2. Liberator's 21st Birthday
3. 'Afford Ability' Sale at Ability World
4. About Friday Announcements
------------------------------ -----------------------
1. Saltillo Becomes a Member of Communication Matters

Greetings,
I am trying to locate John James to ask him some questions about his
innovative teaching, particularly his use of Blissymbol journals. He
used to teach at what was called a "spastics school" near Cardiff but
has been retired for some time. He has fallen out of touch with my
colleague, David Yoder. Several colleagues in the AAC field

Apologies for the late delivery of the last
Friday's Announcements, due by a technical difficulty with our email server...
Friday Announcements - 20 January 2012
CONTENTS
1. New Low-Tech Catalogue from Liberator
2. Therapy Box Regional Open Day
3. New Courses at ACE Centre
4. Crick Software Launch Clicker 6

CM and BHTA are pulling together a list of AAC friendly MPs for an awareness
raising event following up the second Jean Gross report.

If you have names of any MPs who you know are "AAC aware" can you forward
these to us to extend personal initiations to the event

You can do this offline to aree...@ace-north.org.uk or

Hi all.
I have an oldish BT Textphone minicom available for free for anyone who can
find it a good home. Other technology and lifestyle decisions have made it
unnecessary for me for some time and I would like to make sure it does not
go to waste. Just email me with your postal address if you want it.

They really do cover the whole subject in 10 minutes!
fantastic interview with a lovely and very accomplished young lady.
 
Terry
______________________________ __
From: Hector Minto <Hector.Mi...@tobii.com>
To: "cm-aac-forum@googlegroups.com " <cm-aac-forum@googlegroups.com >
Sent: Wednesday, 18 January 2012, 9:50

** COMMERCIAL INTEREST DECLARED**
Hi everyone
I was recently directed to a local radio interview with a Tobii C12 user - Becky Tyler. I think it's a great advert for the Hello Campaign, the Shine A Light awards, the empowerment of proper AAC devices (communicating, environmental control, painting, schoolwork, gaming, telephony). They really do cover the whole subject in ten minutes. Of course, the speech is prepared but this is the nature of live broadcasts for even the most eminent AAC users.

There has been a CM press release on the report which you can visit on the
CM website following these links

[link]
rt
[link]
-publishes-final-report

We have also had some mentions in the press which are listed on the site and

Hi Members, I'm curious if any of the UK people on here have had a
chance to explore/trial the EVOASSIST app and if so what their thought
were in relation to reliability, ease of setup and use, and product
support from the supplier?

From previous conversations with them, I believe it has some basic

I have actually also contacted Scope about this as it has real
implications for welfare reform too.....interestingly I was immediately
replied to and they seem already to have this as an area of interest and
so want to talk more. I have a meeting on a totally different topic at
Scope next Tuesday so I am going to meet with their head of education

I know that things could well change over the next couple of years but as of
now there is some recognition by exam boards of the needs of AAC users. For
example, word prediction systems can be used throughout except when spelling
is specifically being tested. To access this consideration you need to ask

Friday Announcements - 13 January 2012
CONTENTS
1. Launch of NOVA Chat
2. AAC Courses in Bristol
3. About Friday Announcements
----------------------
1. Launch of NOVA Chat
----------------------
From Mark Street, Liberator Ltd:
During 2012 Liberator will be launching the NOVA
Chat range by Saltillo. We have just launched the