BCI Annual General Meeting March 28, 2023

March 28th 2023, BCI Annual General Meeting (AGM) will be held on Zoom

13:00 EDT, 17:00 GMT, 18:00 CET and 19:00 EET

The Zoom link and the Agenda and appropriate documents will be distributed to all Members of 2023 one week before the meeting.

Motions from Members must be received by the Board no later than three weeks before the AGM thus on March 7th.

Members have the right to vote, To pay the Membership fee for 2023, see information under Membership in the left column. Whether you become a member for the first time or renew your membership you need to fill in the Membership form.

3D-Printed Blissymbolics at Closing The Gap


Closing the Gap

40TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE
OCTOBER 19-21, 2022

Minneapolis, Minnesota

New Location! Hilton Minneapolis Hotel


Presentation Length: 1 hour

Date and Time (Central Daylight Time):

  • October 20, 2022
  • 1:30 pm - 2:30 pm


Presentation Title

Next-Gen Tactile Symbols 3D-Printed Blissymbolics


Presenters

Andrea Newall
Institution:University Lecturer in AAC, Speech, Language, and Hearing Program
Position: Speech Language Pathologist, AAC Specialist, Southern California School District

Anitha Muthukumaran
Institution: Douglas County School Districts; University of Northern Colorado, Greeley
Position: Teacher of Students with Visual Impairments; Special Education Doctoral Student

Ken Hackbarth
Institution:Volksswitch
Position: Distinguished Member of Technical Staff; Founder and President

Description of Presentation
In this session we'll introduce you to a new generation of tactile symbols that are perfect for use with non-speaking individuals who are blind, deaf/blind, or visually impaired – including students with cognitive disabilities. The symbols benefit from two different technologies: 3D-printing and Blissymbolics. 3D-printing makes it inexpensive to create these tactile symbols. Blissymbolics provides a rich, conceptual language to develop communication skills with low cognitive requirements. The presentation will highlight the experiences shared by several teachers of students with visual impairments (TVIs) and speech language pathologists (SLPs) how they collaborate and use these tactile symbols with their students. The session will include how educators can get free access to these tactile symbols and supporting materials.

3D Printed Tactile Blissymbols

Volksswitch.org has created a next generation of tactile symbols based on Blissymbolics to teach language to individuals who are blind, deaf-blind, or visually impaired. The symbols may also be effective when used with individuals on the autism spectrum. These Bliss Tactile Symbols are opensource, customizable, extensible, and designed to be 3D-printed.

BCI Annual General Meeting (AGM), April 25 2022

ATTENTION: The BCI Annual General Meeting (AGM) scheduled for March 15th 2022 has been postponed and will now be held on:

April 25th 2022, on Zoom

12:00 EDT, 16:00 GMT, 18:00 CET and 19:00 EET

The Zoom link, agenda and documents will be distributed to all Members of 2022 one week before the meeting.

Motions from Members must be received by the Board no later than three weeks before the AGM thus on April 4th.

Members have the right to vote, To pay the Membership fee for 2022, see information under Membership in the left column. When you become a member for the first time, or renew your membership you will fill in the Membership form.

Celebrating 50 years of Bliss!

On November 24th 2021, we celebrated our 50th Anniversary of Blissymbolics, 1971-2021!

Thank you to everyone who joined us - 119 Zoom connections with many of those shared by multiple people.

We watched our new film “Celebrating 50 Years of Bliss!” and listened to guest speakers from our Bliss community.

Many thanks to Nora Rothschild, Penny Parnes, and Rebecca Chan for facilitating.

You can now view the film here.

Additional information