We ran several pilots with Proloquo2Go in schools in Australia and the United States. In other cases, parents would complain about the school making “random” changes. Teachers and therapists often had no idea where parents “had put” certain words. We noticed that even students using the same app with the same vocabulary could have essential words located in different places. Ideas like "my child is not ready for these words" or "my student will never need these words" drove many to make changes to the Proloquo2Go vocabulary.ĪAC is often used in classrooms that have multiple AAC users. In many cases, we observed changes that did not align with AAC best practice and undermined AAC users' ability to grow their language over time.
In practice, we noticed that the least knowledgeable parents and therapists often made the most changes. This can be done anywhere in the vocabulary, from the home page to the core word templates to the fringe folders.
In Proloquo2Go, users can remove, change, and move any word. We did this because of our experience with Proloquo2Go. In Proloquo, we made the radical decision to lock down the base vocabulary and prevent the first two forms of personalization. Adding personally relevant words to the base vocabulary.Moving words in the base vocabulary to a new location.Removing or changing words from the base vocabulary.There are three types of changes that can be made as part of personalizing an AAC vocabulary: Making changes to such a research-based, well-thought-out AAC vocabulary should be done with care. While many AAC experts have experience personalizing and adapting a vocabulary for the AAC users they work with, very few people have the knowledge, experience, and time to build a strong AAC vocabulary. The new vocabulary in Proloquo is called Crescendo Evolution™.īuilding a solid AAC vocabulary requires a deep understanding of language development, linguistics, AAC best practice, and related fields. Well-known vocabularies include PODD™, Unity ®, LAMP Words for Life ®, Crescendo™, and WordPower™. In fact, in most clinically robust AAC systems, the vocabulary has a name of its own. They are so much more than a collection of words. This is why AAC vocabularies are often referred to as language systems. The easier it is to select the word you want, the more likely you will use the system effectively. The organization of those words is equally important. Proloquo’s vocabulary was carefully planned and curated to include all these words. This means that everyone learning to communicate in English needs access to the same base vocabulary of common and important words. Anyone who knows and uses only 3000 English words uses more or less the same words, irrespective of their age. Instead, research demonstrates that people generally learn the same words in roughly the same order. There is no evidence that this is helpful to the AAC user. It is common for both parents and professionals to limit the vocabulary to the words that seem most immediately relevant to a new user. AAC users who cannot spell yet are limited to the words other people select for them. The vocabulary is the most important part of any symbol-based AAC system.
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