A 2024 leap into new ideas and innovations with ATIA and Zero Project participation.

The ATIA 2024 Conference highlights are available on their website along with a video from the 2024 Prentke AAC Distinguished Lecturer, Karanveer Singh. "Karanveer used AAC to give his lecture, and the audience learned how AAC and AT have helped him access his writing, video editing, and public speaking passions. Watch the session recording"

David has also been collecting some of the latest AAC and AT innovations on his ScoopIT pages that include AI and other ideas that may involve thinking out of the box. For example Easterseals Crossroads was one of the organisations at ATIA sharing latest TechTips including how ChatGPT can make communication more accessible as explained by some AAC users.

One important conversation linked to what AAC tech doesn't always offer was introduced by Hali Strickler in her presentation about "Communication, Connection, & Consent: AAC Vocabulary Access for Sexual Health". Hali has also tackled the subject of explicit language and has a video available on YouTube called "You Said What? Exploring AAC Access to Profanity, Swearing, & Slang" By chance at the same time Maria Scharnke, on behalf of the AAC Image Library got in touch with us. Her website offers a wide ranging vocabulary with symbol categories that are not usually found on other open licenced symbol sets, but are very important when considering adult content. 'Run by AAC users for AAC users' the images are ones that are needed for the subjects covered by Hali's presentations.

At the Zero Project Conference David was involved in a very interesting forum about Artificial Intelligence and disability inclusion (YouTube video) with experts from several companies and organisations.

There are some amazing innovations listed under the Zero Project 2024 awardee list. We wanted to celebrate one European project as being linked to our work "UNICEF's Giving Voice to Every Child" with Cboard working with "Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia, benefitting more than 3,000 children since 2019". A project that has been showcased in our Implementing AAC Knowledge Base

Whilst in Vienna David met Konstantin Strümpf, Co-founder & CTO of Independo GmbH. His company has just developed a calendar app that allows individuals, (who can use mobile technologies) a chance to plan, document and share daily based activites using pictographic symbols. This could be useful for anyone with cognitive and/or communication difficulties and can be linked with a user's symbol set of choice, at present Metacom symbols or photos. We are hopeful a wider choice of open licenced symbols sets will be available in the future!