Monday, May 25, 2009

iPhone adapts for augmentative communication needs

From the Web site for the technology, Proloquo2Go:

Proloquo2Go™ is a new product from AssistiveWare that provides a full-featured communication solution for people who have difficulty speaking. It brings natural sounding text-to-speech voices, up-to-date symbols, powerful automatic conjugations, a default vocabulary of over 7000 items, full expandability and extreme ease of use to the iPhone and iPod touch.

With an introductory price of US$ 149 [1], Proloquo2Go is a perfect solution for anyone who cannot afford spending thousands of dollars on an AAC device and yet wants a solution that in terms of sheer communication power and easy of use rivals solutions typically priced over 10 times as high. It is also perfect for teenagers and young adults who want a device as cool as the iPhone or iPod touch. Not to mention, this a great solution for children and adults with autism, cerebral palsy, down syndrome, developmental disabilities, or apraxia. Proloquo2Go can also serve adults with acquired disabilities such as ALS, stroke or traumatic brain injury. It can be a useful solution in hospital and rehabilitation settings.

Special educators, speech language pathologists, occupational therapists have found Proloquo2Go a proven communication solution for children and adults who can access the iPod touch. Educators see it as a cost-effective solution for special education. Augmentative and Alternative Communication specialists love the ease of programming and customization. Users love Proloquo2Go because it is not only powerful, but it runs on the iPhone and iPod touch. Parents appreciate the system because it is easy to program and makes their children cool. Proloquo2Go can be used as a companion to a table top device or as a user’s sole AAC device.

Proloquo2Go uses Acapela Group’s state-of-the-art Text-to-Speech voices. The current version includes North American English male, female, girl and boy voices. British English voices will soon be available as an option. Support for other languages and voices is in the pipeline. Proloquo2Go provides the innovative, new VocaSpace vocabulary that is build on an extremely flexible organizational system and includes close to 8000 symbols from SymbolStix LLC. Conjugation support is provided through Ultralingua’s Grammatica technology.