Democratisation of AAC Symbol Design for People with Intellectual Disabilities

Abstract

The selection and design of AAC symbols has often been in the domain of those working with potential users rather than led by their paricipation. The paper reviews the work of a team who decided to democratise the process and use inclusive co-design methodologies. The lessons learnt were important and shared to the extent that a three year projec has entered its fifth year supported by organisations interested in global reach and open access. AAC users with intellectual disabilites were fully engaged in decision making for the design of symbols developed both as additions and newly designed open licenced symbol sets. This encouraged design that reflectd the users’ perceptions of cultural and social settings, increasing a sense of famiarity and ownwership.as representative of the countries in which they have been designed. Users also had their own core vocabularies and orthography which highlighted the need for more research into the differences that are occurring between multilingual symbol sets and the need for more work in this area.