Category: Disability

Anne Fox, Communication Trust.

Today, as part of our series on interviewing leaders in the third sector, we’re pleased to be interviewing the ever lovely Anne Fox from the Communication Trust. The Communication Trust is a coalition of almost 50 not-for-profit organisations that work together to  support speech, language and communication. Anne has been running the Communication Trust since […]

To AV or not to AV – that is the petition!

Where I grew up in rural Suffolk the bus network represented an invaluable lifeline. Without those few buses a day into town it would have been practically impossible for me to maintain a social life without being totally dependent on other people. The buses gave me a measure of independence and freedom which it’s hard […]

Sibling Research – can you help?

  Today’s feature is actually more of a research bleg, I’m generally in favour of research, and particularly sibling research and I thought this might be a good place for Rachel to find some people interested in helping out – Joe A study in 2005 (Hodapp, Glidden and Kaiser) found the majority of research into […]

Virginia Beardshaw, Chief Executive of I CAN

We’re continuing our series of interviewing thought leaders in the disability focused part of the third sector (you can read our opening interview with Mark Lever here) . Today we’re very pleased to be interviewing the ever lovely Virginia Beardshaw, who is Chief Executive of I CAN, the children’s communication charity. Virginia was awarded an […]

Mark Lever, CEO of National Autistic Society

It’s time for another set of interviews! Regular readers will remember my series of a few months ago where I interviewed the MPs (and UKIP’s spokesman) to find out the disability policies for the four major parties.  This week I’m starting a new interview series: charity leaders.  Today we welcome the wonderful Mark Lever – […]

AzuleJoe: behind the scenes of the CommuniKate 20 demo

One of the parts of CommuniKate 20 that turned out to be very popular is  AzuleJoe, the demonstration software we use. It’s time to talk a little bit about that live demo and how it works. This is one of those posts that’s only focused on the technical reader. It will have very little value to the non-coders […]

Using AzuleJoe and CommuniKate 20 online

So in November we launched CommuniKate 20.  We were, and are, pretty proud of it. In the last two months, something a little strange has happened, it’s been very popular, and interestingly we’re seeing more and more traffic to AzuleJoe, the demonstration software we use.  We’d intended that the demo page be used by SLTs  […]

Friday Requiem: Square peg in a round hole…

Quick note for readers.  I think it’s important that I consider my back catalogue of posts to be part of the site and that they get maintained, looked after and followed up on.  So each Friday I’ll be picking a post I did from that week last year, and see if my opinions have changed, […]

Step-by-step: Making a Low-Tech Communication Book….

In AAC it’s hard to put enough stress on the importance of having a back up system. Devices break, batteries run down, swimming pools, bad weather, unusual situations, it’s one of those things that really are vital. (It’s also pretty handy when you are working with someone in their language – that way you can […]