AACDroidMobile AAC Application for Sentence Creation

Team Members: Kevin Greene, Christina Fries, Wei Liao, Hien Huynh, Jiho Kim, Apoorva Dewangan

Mentor: James Han

What is AAC? Augmentative and alternative

communication (AAC) refers to communication that expresses our thoughts without oral speech.

People with speech problems rely on AAC through facial expressions, gestures, symbols, pictures, and text.

AAC aids help disabled people interact socially, learn interactively, and communicate effectively.

Information acquired from American Speech-Language-Hearing Association: www.asha.org

Statistics6 to 8 million people in the United States

have some form of language impairment. (National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders)

2.6 million people 15 and older have some difficulty having their speech understood by others. (2002 Census Disability Report)

610,000 are unable to have their speech understood at all. (2002 Census Disability Report)

Products in the Market

Proloquo2Go

DynaVox Xpress

• AAC aids currently in the market are expensive, even though they have simple functionality.

Images acquired from www.dynavox.com Image acquired from

www.proloquo2go.com

Open Source AACDroidOpen source AACDroid implements a

decision tree structure that allows users to construct sentences by choosing pictures in a sequence.

Originally created in Java for the Google Android, the AACDroid program, with its simple but powerful code, can be modified for use with any platform.

Image acquired from www.iconspedia.com

How AACDroid Program Works

Choose Category: Basics, Activity, Expression

Basics: Choose Image

“Hello”

Change name

Change statement

“Goodbye”

Activity: Choose Image

“I am hungry”

Expression: Choose Image

“I am happy”

Home

Category

Image to Speech

Edit Item(Optional)

Program FeaturesFunctions in modern mobile

smart phones, which have become increasingly popular.

Integrates simple user interface into sophisticated framework.

Provides image-to-speech conversion.

Supported by extensive documentation.

Images acquired from www.iconspedia.com

Graph acquired from www.mobileswatch.com

ChallengesLearning Java, and Android SDK from scratch

Learning how AAC algorithms work and are used

Converting from Windows to Google API

Text to speech implementation

Time

Future ImprovementsIn the future, the open source community can

focus on creating:A physical display of images that make up the

user’s sentence.A more extensive list of categories, items, and

voices.Complex sentences, including choices for parts of

speech, prepositional phrases, and conjunctions.Multi-lingual supportWord prediction toolsZoom options

http://code.google.com/p/acc-android