Supporting Personal Narrative for Children with Complex Communication Needs

Black, Rolf; Waller, Annalu; Turner, Ross; Reiter, Ehud

doi:10.1145/2240156.2240163

Cited by 36 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…While only the outcome is summarized here, the prototype is described in more detail in [35,7]. Two children (Julie and Mary 4 ) used the system for one week for a qualitative formative evaluation.…”

Section: Feasibility Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We start with a short overview of a feasibility study with the fi prototype in a fi special needs school. This overview is kept brief, as it is reported elsewhere [7], but is used to highlight the changes incorporated into the current version of the system. The changes among other things address a key technical challenge of how to generate stories from unstructured and occasionally limited sensor data.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The transferred data is encrypted 7 and sent over a 3G network to a server where this data is written to a database. Then, when a child wants to use this data to tell the story of a given day, this data was retrieved and analysed (see also Section 4).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Personal storytelling: Using Natural Language Generation for children with complex communication needs, in the wild…

Tintarev

Reiter

Black

et al. 2016

International Journal of Human-Computer Studies

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This paper describes a Natural Language Generation system (NLG), How was School Today? that automatically creates a personal narrative from sensor data and other media (photos and audio). It can be used by children with complex communication needs in schools to support interactive narrative about personal experiences. The robustness of story generation to missing data was identified as a key area for improvement in a feasibility study of the system at a fi special needs school. This paper therefore suggests three possible methods for generating stories from unstructured data: clustering by voice recording, by location, or by time. Clustering based on voice recordings resulted in stories that were perceived as most easy to read, and to make most sense, by parents in a quantitative evaluation. This method was implemented in the live system, which was developed and evaluated iteratively at a second special needs school with children with diff t usage profi Open challenges and possibilities for nlg in augmented and alternative communication are also discussed.

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Section: Feasibility Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Personal storytelling: Using Natural Language Generation for children with complex communication needs, in the wild…

Tintarev

Reiter

Black

et al. 2016

International Journal of Human-Computer Studies

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“…al. 43 used RFID tags to input information on where a child was in a school and swipe cards to log who they were with; Wisenburn and Higginbotham 41 used speech recognition to attempt to recognise the content of communication partners' speech -i.e. attempting to use a topic as context; while Netzer and Elhadad 44 created a system using the Bliss symbolic language as the input and used NLG to produce natural sounding spoken sentences.…”

Section: Incorporating Context Support In Communication Aidsmentioning

confidence: 99%

What is the potential for context aware communication aids?

Judge

Hawley

Cunningham

et al. 2015

Journal of Medical Engineering & Technology

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Use of voice output communication aids (VOCAs) can be a very effective strategy to assist people with speech impairments in communicating. Despite this, people who use communication aids often express frustration with VOCAs -desiring devices that are simpler, quicker and more effective to use.Whilst it is not possible to resolve all these issues with technology, we argue that significant progress can be made. The use of contextual information is one development that could improve the simplicity and effectiveness of communication aid design. Individuals using a VOCA also face constraints related to the selection of these items.Those using text representation will need to select around 27-40 items (unless using an ambiguous keyboard 5 ), whereas those using graphic symbols may need to select from as many as 4000 items. To navigate this number of items the user is required to make a series of selections Individuals use a range of strategies to select items on a VOCA -some may be able to press directly onto a screen or keyboard (known as direct access), whereas others may have difficulties with co-ordination or control and require alternative access devices. These devices can include alternative keyboards (for example those with key 'guards'), alternative mice (for example, eye gaze or head movement selection), or other controls such as switches. Switches are binary (non-latched) 'buttons' that come in a range of types -with varying size, shape, activation force or method. When using a switch, the user will either press it to select the desired item from a list of items through which the computer is scrolling, or use multiple switches to manually 'move' through the possible selections and then select the desired item 7 .There are few studies measuring actual input or output (speaking) rates of VOCA users, however for text production an output (measured in words per minute -wpm) of less than 5 wpm for switch access 8 , or less than or around 10 wpm for AAC users using any mode 9,10 has been suggested. This can be compared to studies of typing on 'soft' keyboards that suggest rates of between 8-20wpm 11 . As the speaking rate of a typical speaker during conversation may be between 100 and 200 wpm 12,13 it can be seen that current AAC output is in the region of an order of magnitude slower than spoken speech.People who use AAC and VOCAs often cite challenges and frustrations related to the speed of communication using these systems and also in their simplicity of use 14,15 . This has been a focus of prior work carried out as part of the NIHR Devices for Dignity (D4D) Healthcare example, the iOS8 word prediction keyboard claims to take into account " your text messaging style", "who you're writing to", "what the conversation is about" and "how you email" 34 . The Use of Context for Augmentative CommunicationPeople who use AAC may be able to process and use the context of a conversation receptively in the same way as any other individual. However, their operational use of this contextual information is much mo...

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“…The How was School today...? (HwSt) project [7] uses sensor data to provide information about a disabled child's day at school. Time stamped data related to location (e.g.…”

Section: Background and Previous Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Chronicles: Supporting Conversational Narrative in Alternative and Augmentative Communication

Waller¹,

Menzies²,

Herron³

et al. 2013

Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2013

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Abstract. Individuals share experiences and build relationships through the medium of narrative. Lifelong personal narratives play a key role in developing social identity. Individuals with little or no functional speech due to severe speech and physical impairments (SSPI) find it difficult to share personal narrative as augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems do not support interactive story telling. As a result, people with congenital SSPI who use AAC may not have learned the linguistic skills involved in sharing narratives. The Chronicles software was developed to support the sharing of personal narrative. Conversational analysis of a conversation using Chronicles illustrates how the system can support more natural conversations when using AAC.

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Supporting Personal Narrative for Children with Complex Communication Needs

Cited by 36 publications

References 41 publications

Personal storytelling: Using Natural Language Generation for children with complex communication needs, in the wild…

Personal storytelling: Using Natural Language Generation for children with complex communication needs, in the wild…

What is the potential for context aware communication aids?

Chronicles: Supporting Conversational Narrative in Alternative and Augmentative Communication

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