Fostering Autonomy through Augmentative and Alternative Communication

Abstract

According to the World Health Organization, an estimated one billion people live with a disability. Millions of them are nonverbal and also experience motorskill challenges. The restrictions on participation and communication caused by such disabilities often lead to discrimination and social exclusion, including the lack of access to formal education. Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) is a method to afford communication for people with speech impairment. Software applications that implement AAC bring benefits of adaptability and personalization over traditional paperbased methods, but their usability needs improvement, particularly to increase user autonomy. This paper presents an interface redesign of the Livox AAC application, and a new user onboarding process based on user research to adjust the interface to user needs, contributing to user autonomy on AAC use.