We have been working with two cummunicators; Plaphoons and E-Mintza.
The advantanges of Mitza are the following: it is eye-friendly. Personal data and “YES” and “NO” are permanently in the main window, whose background colour can be adjusted by the user.
The advantanges found in Plaphoon and that made uso pt fot in in the end are:
We recommend to download the Communicator software directly from the website of the Project Fressa. This site is improved every year and some other supplementary programmes and communicators are uploaded, either complete or simple
Once the Communicator is selected, a main window with courtesy greetings and farewells, “YES” and “NO”, personal data, keyboard and a bell to call the carer is chosen.
From this page, we can access to PICTOGRAMS. Here, the upper part has been organized to greet, bid farewell and to express gratitude. On the left, a link to the main page and to a thematic index have been placed. There are also “YES” and “NO” and on the central part of the web it is posible to Access to those elements that we heve considered to be the most needed in everyday life.
There is a request or sign of bodily matters. We have opted for an structure that goes from top to bottom (head, trunk, limbs) which seemed to be logical for us.
Regarding the thematic index, there are several sections.
We will display some of them as an example making clear that there are two left empty to add any other useful vocabulary for special situations like a stay in hospital where some specific questions could be needed.
When we install plaphoons we sometimes find that the only language option given in the voice syntheziser is Ann’s voice in American English. To add voices using Windows 7 it is necessary to download Microsoft Speech Platform – Runtime (Version 11) and install it for 32 or 64 bits as convenient.
After this first step, we will have to download and install the languages and its TTS (texto to speech). We click on the download button and we select these two archives
MSSpeech_TTS_es-ES_Helena.msi
Once this has been done, if we click on the menu options button andon Syntheziser TTS, Ann’s voice will be aviable to be selected. If the voice is too strong, there are accents to check like Hilda´s Mexican voice which sounds more childish