The ATIA 2025 conference offers the Global Symbols team a chance to catch up with the latest advancements in Assistive Technology as well as Augmentative and Alternative Communication research and practices. We also hope to share the advances we have been making in the use of Generative Artificial Intelligence technologies for the creation of pictographic.
In today's digital world, Generative AI (GenAI) has the potential to help us make AAC symbols using descriptive sentences known as text prompts. The resulting images may never be 100% perfect, but with help it is possible to avoid some confusing and inconsistent results which may only need a little expert editing.
Holidays can be a wonderful break in daily life and a chance to learn about different cultures and settings. A trip to Northern Norway provided a very brief glimpse into the way symbols are used by the Sámi people.
Strategic Education Solutions support those with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) to self-advocate. With this aim the team have encouraged involvement with the development of a useful vocabulary combined with representative symbols about participatory action research.
A netidee project has meant that the technical foundations for interaction between two successful platforms 'AsTeRICS Grid' and 'Global Symbols' has been laid. Soon it will be possible for everyone to easily share multiple open licenced AAC symbol sets by making communication boards in BoardBuilder and using them in AsTeRICS Grid or sharing the idea in a similar way with other apps thanks to their open source licencing.