Connect to Control: How we can do the ‘bells and whistles'

At the 2008 Communication Matters Conference, Chris Sherlock and colleagues from South Birmingham PCT gave a presentation ‘Do we need the bells & whistles?’ Liz Howarth and the author of this paper presented at CM2009 with the title ‘Can we provide the Bells and Whistles?’. Now that most communication aids support the type of ‘connected’ features that will be discussed in this paper, the justification for undertaking this work has, in the view of the College, shifted from “should we do this?” to “how do we do this?”. In 2009, this work was somewhat new to Beaumont; now, five years on, the approaches have been embedded and supported by further project work. This paper explores in more depth the presentation given by the author at the Communication Matters 2013 conference. It will explore how AAC devices can be used for functions other than talking; this includes general computing, telephone services, access to the internet, social networking and environmental control systems (ECS). This paper will also describe the team model and the assistive technologist post as used at Beaumont College to enable students to access these features. The paper also gives an overview of the BT-funded Scope project Connect to Control and the original research that the author undertook, in support of this project, for an MSc by Research at Lancaster University (Slaughter, Connect to Control, 2013).