April 2, 2012

Little Monster

Happy Monday, and welcome to April! (I'm not sure why I just welcomed you to April. Is it supposed to be any better than March?) There's a new post up at Support for Special Needs. It's a topic I've touched on before around here, but in the aftermath of the whole discussion in other online venues of whether or not it is appropriate to "hate" a child's disability, I thought it would be a good time to revisit the whole "monster" metaphor, particular with a different crowd over there. There are always new people eager to have something at which to shake their angry little fists, after all.



In a brief followup to last week's post, we've gotten our hands on a copy of the Speak4Yourself app that has cause such a kerfluffle in the AAC world. We've all been playing with it over the weekend, and once we've had a chance to fairly evaluate it, I will definitely do a write up.

My initial observations? It is really robust, with a bit of a learning curve. At the same time, it is much less similar to MinSpeak than I thought it would be, and I'm less convinced than before that the lawsuit by Semantic Compaction and PRC is going to gain very much traction. There are a few features I'd like to see (although in all fairness, I probably just haven't found them yet), and some (such as the seamless interaction with texting apps) that I think are brilliant.

So more soon on that.

art by Edith Meyer, 2007

1 comment:

farmwifetwo said...

My severely autistic - slowly learning to talk - 10yr old would probably happily call his a monster too. He doesn't embrace his "way of being" gently. He dislikes the limits that have to be put on him to be safe. He doesn't always understand why something has to be a certain way. He's academically smart in many ways - reading, writing, graphic arts/photos (DSi and nobody taught him to do the amazing things he does on it) - but in many ways trapped and he knows from watching his older bro, his freedoms, his activities that he is very much different.

May she win her battles with Polly or negotiate a truce to her liking.

We'll keep chipping away at our monster as well. Autism awareness month is this month and I'm very much tired about how he should "accept" his autism and how it's a "way of being"... they definately have never asked him what he thinks... have they?