Tag Archives: UNICEF

Global versus Universal?

“Global” reflects the nuance of culture and language, “Universal” assumes that one size fits all.

voting hands around the worldWorking with UNICEF and the AAC Cohort is one of the most exciting things we have been doing recently.  We have had telemeetings with lots of discussions about opening the world of AAC symbols to the widest possible audience.  Topics have ranged from different open licences such as Creative Commons and open source software to what it takes to develop Alternative and Augmentative Communication (AAC) symbols that can be used across the world and on to more complex ideas including Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning and AAC!

You might ask why are we thinking about the meaning of words such as  ‘Global’  and ‘Universal’ whilst building a symbol repository.  We feel that global recognises different languages, cultures, religions and social settings and environments.   In part this is because we have promised ourselves that we will not be introducing yet another symbol set that includes symbols that are universally recognised.   We accept that there are many symbols that can be said to be universal because they are recognised worldwide, but we are looking at the nuances that occur in different countries and where localisation is important.

what time is it?

What time is it?

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We discussed the idea of “Symbols for different settings across the world” when we were working on the Tawasol Symbols in 2016 and looked at some of the issues that W3C highlighted for web developers thinking about  localisation and globalisation or internationalisation. such as:

  1. “Numeric, date and time formats
  2. Use of currency
  3. Keyboard usage
  4. Collation and sorting
  5. Symbols, icons and colors
  6. Text and graphics containing references to objects, actions or ideas which, in a given culture, may be subject to misinterpretation or viewed as insensitive.
  7. Varying legal requirements
  8. and many more things.”

We discovered that No.8  ‘many more things’ included  the criteria below when working on the Tawasol Symbols and that these features came about as a result of our voting sessions with AAC users, their families, carers and the professionals working with them.  criteria for symbol design

Global Symbols aims to ensure that all the open symbols we add will have been reviewed by those using AAC and those involved in supporting AAC users in the locality where they have been developed, whilst also allowing for personalisation.

Watch this spot for all the changes we plan for the Global Symbols web site in the coming months! The first group of symbols will be coming from the UNICEF AAC cohort members – Jellow designed by those developing the app in India and cBoard, developed in Argentina and Israel, at present using the Mulberry Symbols from Straight Street that were voted on by users and AAC supporters in the UK over a period of several years.

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We will be updating this blog as we add symbols and please join us on Facebook to discuss the changes!  We will also be tweeting about updates

Thank you UNICEF for this very thought provoking, challenging and interesting partnership. 

 

New York and the UNICEF AAC Cohort

David Banes and I were lucky enough to meet up with an exciting group of start-up companies in the world of open source AAC. The UNICEF AAC Cohort is made up of CIREHA (Argentina), Daokudai (China) and Ninaad Digital Technology (India) led by the UNICEF Innovation team based in New York.  We met up at 101 Park Avenue for three days of intense workshops and one on one meetings.  It was an exciting agenda with topics ranging from open source application development by Atul Varma to localisation, developing personas, business plans and budgets.  Gabriella Levine provided a thought provoking risk analysis guide with some very helpful advice relevant to both open source hardware and software development.

The slides below about Open Source Development have been copied into Slidewiki from Atul’s github pages. 

Associate Professor Ayesha Butt from University of Riphah in Islamabad has also let us show her slides.  She highlighted the importance of localisation, making systems that work for the individual in their own settings with symbols that support cultural needs and suitable social settings.

Mercy Kirui, Matthew Utterback and Will Clurman from Ekitabu, Kenya were also in attendance as they were sharing what they had learnt in the set up period of their UNICEF supported open source, cross-platform e-reading system for those with print disabilities, such as visual impairment.  Their company provides access to ebooks that offer an accessibility provision in schools and described how they dealt with data collection, marketing and their business model.  They also mentioned their successful digital essay competitions and events such as book fairs and have now set up a Digital Literacy Trust

Each AAC company gave us a final summary of their plans for the future based on all the ideas that had been shared over the three days.

communication boardCIREHA showed us the early version of cBoard that uses  Mulberry Symbols and offers support for those with complex communication needs.  It is an open source online and offline dynamic symbol board system with text to speech, that aims to offer a flexible approach to the creation of communication boards so that it can be personalised to suit both children and adults.  An early online version of cBoard can be be used as a demonstration of what is to come. Many ideas were discussed about the use of OpenBoard format that we have also used to produce communication charts along with the adoption of other Creative Commons symbol sets!

Yuudee sample symbol chartDaokudai (China) are developing Yuudee2, an application designed for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) or with language disorders.  They have an interesting use of animated symbols working with speech recognition to improve speech and language in social situations. Earlier versions of the app are available as Yuudee on Google Play

Jellow symbols Ninaad Digital Technology (India) have been developing Jellow that aims to support children with speech and language difficulties.  The symbols have been designed with the particular needs of the local community in mind and but are provided under a Creative Commons licence for sharing with a wider audience.  They are also used in communication charts, booklets and as an app available in Hindi and UK/USA English from Google Play There were interesting discussions about data collection and Ninaad showed the power of analysing the data they have received as a result of sessions using their app.   It was possible to not only see how long the app had been used but also which areas attracted most attention.

We really are looking forward to supporting the development of cBoard, Yuudee2 and Jellow as open source projects in the future.  It will be exciting to see if we can can integrate their languages with translations and symbol sets with others that are available with Creative Commons licences.  This would allow many more AAC users to benefit from the UNICEF Innovation funded AAC Cohort’s work.  You can tell it was an inspiring week away from the day to day job!