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.

Prelude To ISAAC

Prelude To ISAAC Movie

This film called Prelude to ISAAC was shown at the digital ISAAC meeting on the 12th of August.

The film is produced by Penny Parnes, Lynnette Norris, Judy wine and Shirley who all were very actively involved in introducing Blissymbolics as a mean of linguistic communication for children without functional speech in the 70ties. In the film, they interview many of the people, teachers, SLPs, technicians, parents, etc. who were involved in the Bliss work that eventually led to the creation of ISAAC and the concept.

View with captions here

or without captions here.

Picture Book With Bliss Words

Picture Book With Bliss Words

By Lode Van de Velde

This Picture Book with Bliss-Words is a picture dictionary for the Blissymbolics language. It contains 450 Bliss words from daily life, explained with pictures in 35 categories. In the back of the book, there is an exercise section to practise a selection of Bliss symbols.

Available now here.

Extra information