Mobile 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. 6 to 8 million people in the United States have some form of language impairment. (National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders) AAC aids help disabled people interact socially, learn interactively, and communicate effectively. Information acquired from American Speech-Language-Hearing Association:

Open Source AACDroid Open source AACDroid is an AAC aid that allows users to construct sentences by choosing pictures in a sequence. Originally created in Java for the Google Android, the AACDroid program functions in modern mobile smart phones, which have become increasingly popular. Image acquired from

Products in the Market Proloquo2Go DynaVox Xpress AAC aids currently in the market are expensive, even though they have simple functionality. Images acquired from Image acquired from

Decision Tree Algorithm Edit Item (Optional) Image to Speech CategoryHome Choose Category: Basics, Activity, Expression Common Expressions: Choose Image “Hello”Change name Change statement “Goodbye” Activity: Choose Image “I am hungry” Expression: Choose Image “I am happy”

Improvements In the past week, the following features have been enhanced: Ability to create customized entries Implementation of a database to store unique entries Display of the sentence currently being spoken

Demo

Future Improvements Interface A more extensive list of categories, items, and voices Zoom and scroll options Ability to create complex sentences with choices for parts of speech, prepositional phrases, and conjunctions Drag and drop, allowing the user to change the order of the buttons on the layout

Future Improvements Scalability Creation of subcategories Ability to set category names Customizable button icons Compatibility with other versions of Android Porting to other platforms

Future Improvements Settings Menu Text-to-Speech: change language, pitch, speed Restore default database Set start-up message

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