- From: Lionel Wolberger <lionel@userway.org>
- Date: Thu, 7 Oct 2021 12:52:39 +0300
- To: public-personalization-tf <public-personalization-tf@w3.org>
- Cc: Lisa Seeman <lisa.seeman@zoho.com>, Lisa Seeman <lisa1seeman@gmail.com>
- Message-ID: <CAHOHNHdjyQgdNFN1vwtv3WcALkTz3mwXorExdZ6tNZuQz42jqw@mail.gmail.com>
Hi All, I consulted with Dr. Adi Neeman, an expert in AAC and its use in Hebrew and Arabic. It was perfect timing, as October is international AAC month. The executive summary: - There are no RTL or LTR issues, since current AAC practice maps single words to single symbols. This solves our i18n issue. - Discursive narratives like Alice in Wonderland are not "translated" or transformed into symbols. Procedures and recipes are better sample text. SO the epub page could be a cookbook recipe. - Bliss is no longer used in the greater AAC community. Currently the proprietary and commercial symbols Tobii Dynavox and SymbolStix dominate. There are open source symbols available here, https://globalsymbols.com. We may also try ARASAAC. This means we need to change how we discuss symbols, and look closer at symbol inter-compatibility. - The inline rendering in the "WikiHow" proof of concept is not best practice. The symbols should be rendered above the text, each symbol above the word that it portrays. About Dr. Adi Neeman: Chief Executive Officer of ISAAC (International Society for Augmentative and Alternative Communication) Israel. Also leads the Israeli association of Augmentative and Alternative Communication. Below please find some more details of what we discussed. - Lionel DISCUSSION NOTES ==================== The Bliss system was created for a non-computerized world. The advent of the iPad accelerated the migration away from Bliss. While ISAAC does not recommend any particular set, these are the current leaders: PCS, SymbolStix (commercial) and Global Symbols (free). For narratives like a book, today AAC-reliant people view a video or a cartoon, as AAC users may also have memory issues so long strings of consecutive symbols cannot be parsed meaningfully. Rendering: The vast majority put the word under the symbol, fitting the caption pattern, where words appear under the image. When you put the words in order, then the symbols will render in that order. There are localization issues with individual symbols. e.g. the parking symbol (based on the letter P in English, based on the letter HET in Hebrew); walking direction (in LTR the person is facing right, in RTL cultures the person is facing left); breakfast images (the eggs sausage and bacon image is not an Israeli breakfast) and so on. YouTube is the #1 popular site for many AAC reliant people, and remediating video search engines would be very helpful. Also look at the school websites that cater to AAC students. Display location is important: AAC users have visual memory and learn where things are located spatially. People usually look at the central frame of our visible display area. On communication boards the most important things go in the center, with the less important things go into the periphery. When this standard succeeds, everyone will use it. It will help promote literacy, as people match images to words. ARASAAC is a symbol set that can be used freely. Lionel Wolberger COO, UserWay Inc. lionel@userway.org UserWay.org <http://userway.org/> <https://t.sidekickopen90.com/s3t/c/5/f18dQhb0S7kF8cFFTBW4T_qld2zGCwVN8Jbw_8QsRtKVn1vXj1p1kknW16gGBN41Jd6G101?te=W3R5hFj4cm2zwW4hLZp04myBBCf43Wg2w04&si=8000000004174048&pi=62edaed8-a4c7-47ff-8b84-9b204004c8ee>[image: text]
Received on Thursday, 7 October 2021 09:53:29 UTC