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A Celebration of Thirty Years of Bliss in Canada.
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BCI Celebrates Thirty Years of Bliss in Canada.From Margrit Beesley
The Beginning of Blissymbols.
Sometimes new ideas are ready to be born. That is how the Blissymbols came into their existence in order to help the nonverbal child. We were fortunate in the beginning that Shirley McNaughton and myself were given permission by our supervisors to explore new avenues for the "nonverbal" to communicate". I was frustrated by the limitations of picture boards and had this vague idea that we could create a system that might be combined to express a new meaning.
Shirley was immediately inspired and searched the library for the right material. She found a book, Signs and Symbols Around the World by Elizabeth Helfman. We were both excited by a small article on bliss Symbols and we saw the potential it could bring to enhance nonverbal communication. Soon he first class was formed.
After a long search for the book Semantography (the bible of Blissymbols) by C.K. Bliss, one was found in the library in Sudbury. Using this book, we enlarged our vocabulary. To our surprise, the children were able to learn the symbols faster than we were able to produce them. While Shirley was teaching, I was eagerly drawing new displays by hand. We were soon running out of space because of limited hand function. Shirley designed the first grid system by grouping the symbols in blocks of ten and colour coding them. But physically this system was still impossible for the more handicapped users like Ann Running.
In the 70's, our departments worked very closely together as one unit on technical problems, and we had free access to the Rehab Engineering Department. They developed for us a beautifully crafted tray with a pointer that moved "forward and back" by activating two paddle switches. The system needed a very accurate hand control in order to stop the pointer at the desired symbol. This created a lot of frustration for some of our Blissymbol users!
So began the search to develop a new technology using interfaces. One has to remember this was around the time of "pre-microcomputer" technology. One of the most impressive pieces of equipment was developed for us by Scott Walder. It had a huge classroom display and each person was to have his own display. The idea was that each child could point on his/her own board and send a symbol message via a link to the classroom display for every one to see. The teacher had control of "who's turn it was to speak". Unfortunately, this project was never completed. In part because of lack of money to pursue the technical resources. One other project Scott was working on was a system where two children could "talk" to each other without the help of an adult.
Later on, a scanning device with LED lights for 100 symbols was developed. It could be operated via one or two switches or a joy stick which could move in all four directions.
Soon it was clear that 100 symbols were not enough and two boards were linked together. At the time, we had quite a few nonverbal children on this system and it was later expanded to a new board of 512 symbols.
While we were still struggling with technology, the Blissymbols spread quickly all over the world. Greg Vanderheiden, from the Trace Centre in Madison, Wisconsin, wrote a program to produce Blissymbols on an Apple computer. I was able to order an Apple computer with this program included in its memory from the States. It was incased in a funny looking wooden box classified as medical equipment! This was our first Apple computer and the beginning of the new Micro-computer technology.
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