From experience

Working independently thanks to Document Maker exercises

Kirsten is a young woman in her twenties. She is completely dependant on others for her daily care and cannot speak. However, she continues to work on living her life as independently as possible.

Kirsten lives at home with her parents and her younger brother. Thanks to a budget the insurance company pays, young people come to their home to take Kirsten out. Because Kirsten cannot speak, she uses a Wizard for communication. Her "yes" and "no" are clearly identifiable, which is good, because Kirsten has wishes of her own. She can drive her electric wheelchair herself. She has the technical means to be independant, although the fact that her energy and body sometimes forsake her is a great impediment to her.

E-mailing with symbols

Several days a week, Kirsten attends the Jan Lighthart activity centre in Bussum. Because there are not many possibilities for her to work on her own, the group supervisor and I have looked for ways to provide her with interesting challenges. These have been found in the form of working with the computer. This is what happened:

Kirsten worked with us in the WWAAC project. That was the moment I got to know Kirsten. The project was aimed at making the Internet accessible for symbol users. The software used was the Symbol for Windows software. Kirsten had just got her Wizard and the vocabulary still had to be filled in completely. She wanted to work with her computer too, so we started to fill in the vocabularies of both the Wizard and the Symbol for Windows software on her computer with the same repertoire of symbols.

After having worked with Bliss symbols for a while, with which Kirsten was used to work as a child, we switched to PCS symbols a few months later. The coloured PCS symbols are easier to recognize for her. Kirsten was at the time mainly interested in working with the PC in general and in writing e-mails with symbols in particular.

It was a revelation for her to be able to work with the computer unaided this way. Communicating with symbols became something of her own again, something that had been neglected over the years.

Worksheets on the computer

After completing the WWAAC project (Kirsten's participation lasted six months), Kirsten didn't work with the computer as frequently as before. This seemed a good moment to screen the contents of the Wizard. It became clear that Kirsten couldn't find the symbols and messages quickly enough. So we made an appointment at the activity centre to discuss what activities could be thought of for Kirsten to do there, with the necessary adaptations. The idea was put forward to make some sort of worksheets with questions on them, that Kirsten could fill in herself.

Several questionnaires or exercises were made, taking into account the contents of the vocabulary. The activity centre arranged for the purchase of the necessary software and hardware. Since Kirsten had in the mean time switched to the PCS symbols, she took her dongle with her to the centre, giving her access to the PCS database there as well.

Kirsten controls the computer with her Adremo head support. The two head support switches are connected to an I-mouse (a device between the head support and the computer). With the Symbol for Windows module the Document Maker it is possible to work in row-column scanning mode. This input type is the same as the input type Kirsten uses to control the Wizard.

The exercises

The exercises are constructed in a special way. The questions always concern only one category. This category is specified at the beginning of the exercise.

Kirsten can move through the questions with the arrow keys that are built in the software.

At first, the answer had to be filled in behind the question. This meant that Kirsten had to complete a lot of steps, she had to move throught the arrow keys a lot of times to select the spot where the symbol had to be placed. So then we decided to leave an open space followed by the = sign and then the question. Now Kirsten can fill in the answer where the space is, making the exercises a lot easier to complete.

Since the vocabulary is adapted regularly, I mail the recent vocabulary to the group leader of the activity centre, who then places it on Kirsten's computer.

Writing letters

Working with the computer has helped Kirsten to find her way in her vocabulary. At home with the Wizard, we did similar exercises, with questions like: What does it look like? What does this word rhyme with? What colour is it?

At the activity centre, Kirsten's group leader still makes exercises for her every week. On Fridays she can work on the computer, too, nowadays. The group leader that works that day lets her work on her own. That's a different approach, which appeals to Kirsten, although it was a bit awkward at first to write letters and tekst all on her own. But Kirsten is not giving up and she is now able to write personal letters. The independance that she wanted so much, is more and more within her reach, thanks to her own perseverance, the support of her parents and the group leaders that keep their word and keep the flow of new material going.

We keep being creative and will probably keep discovering new possibilities with which Kirsten can work independantly. E-mail and the Internet will play an important role in the future, that is for sure.