DEVELOPING AAC TECHNOLOGIES - A PERSONAL STORY AND PHILOSOPHY

Research into and development of augmentative and alternative communic ation (AAC) technologies is an exciting but complex field. The develop ment of a technologically based system which will be an alternative to , or will augment, the speech modality for the interpersonal communica tion needs of people with communication dysfunction is not an easy tas k. This is only a young field and thus much of the research methodolog y is not yet well defined. It is also a growing field, and one to whic h we would wish to attract new practitioners, and provide appropriate guidance to them. In any technological development project, it is impo rtant to define clearly a number of parameters of the project. These a re: the client group; the knowledge base needed to solve the problems; the potential technologies that will help and their characteristics; and the rime scales envisaged for completion of the research. The auth ors have been part of a research team working in this field for many y ears, and, in this paper, they will examine three research strategies which they have found particularly beneficial, illustrating the concep ts discussed mainly by reference to personal experiences. The paper co ncentrates on a relatively narrow definition of technology - that whic h is often referred to as 'high technology' or information technology. This is not to deny, in any way, the importance to the AAC field of s olutions based on other technology, and the authors would hope that so me of the comments in the paper are also appropriate to researchers wh o are working with systems and techniques which do not depend on these technologies.