10:27am December 17, 2013

does anyone

jack-not-jacque:

madeofpatterns:

Does anyone have a communication page for social violence? Or a symbol set?

I’m a bit dismayed that there are no symbols for violence/fear/punch/hurt.

I’m not familiar with how Proloquo2go works exactly, but if you can import new symbols into the program, these might be useful.

ARASAAC’s symbols for assault, mistreatment, and discrimination sound like they might be what you’re looking for. And the symbols for insult, scare, fear, and maybe throw out too.

Sclera has a symbol for bullying.

How It Is was created to help children communicate about abuse, so its symbols may be useful, but they’re aimed at kids and not as cleanly drawn. They have symbols for threaten and restrain (trigger warning for this link?) and some for advocacy.

And if you happen to want other symbols about advocacy/equality, ARASAAC has these: rights, respect, support, integration, equal opportunity, accessibility, and accommodations.

Hope these help! :)

reblogging for reference

One thing I’ve done, on Proloquo2Go.

Is I’ve taken the Core Words vocabulary. That’s the highest level of vocabulary. You can change the amount of words per page, and the complexity, on the Appearance tab. If you change the size of the grid it actually changes the way the vocabulary is arranged in an intelligent way. I got it to a size that’s cognitively possible for me, which is about six. More than that and I start getting shaky with seeing all those words in one spot in a big grid.

And in the main categories, I’ve added some pages, added words to them, usually simple words and phrases.

And on the second page of the main first block of words you get. On that second page, towards the bottom left, separated from all the other folders and words, I’ve created a folder (mine has a butterfly on it just to make it stand out) with some kind of name that makes it seem like one of the main ones, even though it’s not the home directory itself. Make sure, if you do this, that you make the name something that doesn’t exist already.

And in THAT folder, I start making folders based on situation.

Like one of the folders is “Communication Places” or something like that. And it might have elevators, van rides, doctor, ER, etc.

And another one is “Social Situations” and that’s where I put things like “Cussing”, “Boundaries”, etc.

The thing about all of these sections that differentiates them from the Core Vocabulary.

Is that the Core Vocabulary is explicitly set up to be single words or short phrases, that you can string together easily into sentences.

My sections are mostly things that are already sentences. Some of them may also be words you can string into sentences, or phrases, or halves of sentences, whatever makes it easier to communicate quickly.

And sometimes they’ll borrow from each other.

Like sections in the Core Vocabulary part will link to sections in my own more sentence-based vocabulary, and vice-versa, depending on what I need. Like I’ll link to the “small words” or “little words” sometimes if I want to be able to have all the tiny words at my fingertips without putting them all in the page.

Remember, also, that each folder has page 1, page 2, and storage. Storage is where you can leave words and phrases and sentences that you’re not using at this exact moment, but you can easily go into edit mode and pull them out into page one or page two. Usually what they do with page one and page two is prioritize so the more important stuff is in page one and the less important stuff is in page two.

This is all assuming you’re using a fairly up-to-date version of Proloquo2Go, which it looks from the screenshot as if you are. Sometimes when you go to a page that they’ve made already, and you don’t see a word you want, before you create it yourself you should look into their storage page to see whether the word is there. I’ve found all kinds of amazing words in the storage page.

The thing about having entire sentences at your disposal is that then you don’t have to piece them together word by word, the way the Core Vocabulary usually makes you do. You can instead just have one sentence ready to say in a situation where you may not be able, or have the time, to piece together words. I try to keep those somewhat separated from the Core Vocabulary words, even though there are links between the two. That way each one can do their job separately and I can switch between them easily and efficiently.

I hope some of that makes sense. You may even sometimes want to have two separate pages on a single topic. You could have one in the Core Vocabulary section (whatever section is most appropriate, do some exploring, there’s lots there that you won’t always find easily. It’s also good to practice figuring out how to say things, it’s really really hard at first, but as you learn the locations of certain types of words, it gets easier.

And even if you can’t master the word by word stuff, you can still do things that are “hit one button to say an important phrase or sentence” — which is one of the most important things to have, in a tight social situation without much time and without much brain to remember what to say. You can even sometimes go into the situation with that part of your software open, if you know what is likely to happen.

Notes: