Effect of AAC technology with dynamic text on the single-word recognition of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities

Abstract

Purpose: Single-word recognition can support participation in life, including engagement in leisure activities, navigation through the community, and vocational opportunities. Given the limited reading skills of many adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) and limited speech, the current study evaluated the effects of using an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) app, featuring dynamic text and speech output embedded in visual scene displays, on the single-word recognition performance of six adults with IDD who demonstrated limited speech.

Method: A multiple baseline across participants single-subject design was used. Ten target sight words for each participant were selected on an individual basis, based on participant interest. Intervention consisted solely of interactions between investigators and individual participants using the app.

Result: In the absence of any formal instruction and solely through the use of the AAC app interaction, three of the six participants demonstrated increased accuracy in single-word recognition.

Conclusion: Results from the study were mixed, but suggest that AAC apps which provide the dynamic display of text in conjunction with voice output can assist some adults with IDD in achieving gains in single-word reading.

Keywords:

• augmentative and alternative communication
• literacy
• system design
• sight word reading
• intellectual and developmental disability
• adults

Note

Declaration of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17549507.2019.1619836

Notes

1 The app with the Transition to Literacy feature was developed by InvoTek, Inc. under the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Augmentative and Alternative Communication.

Additional information

Funding

This study was completed in partial fulfilment of the PhD programme requirements at Pennsylvania State University. This study was supported by funding from a grant from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR [grant number #90RE5017]) to the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centre on Augmentative and Alternative Communication (RERC on AAC). Additionally, the first author received funding from the U.S. Department of Education [grant #H325D110008] during her doctoral training at Pennsylvania State University, and the sixth author received funding from the U.S. Department of Education [grant #H325K080333] during her graduate training at Pennsylvania State University.