TileTalker, a brief description
Our products will be firmly targeted at the low cost end of the market to ensure that price is no obstacle to getting good communications aids.
They will initially be aimed at the education market with emphasis of the profound and multiple learning disabilities. But, they are designed with more able users definitely in mind so that the same product will serve both as an education aid and stimulus to the profoundly disabled while providing complex and advanced control and interfacing for those who are mentally more agile but are physically disabled.
A couple of simple examples might help here.
For profound and multiply disabled users it is important to teach cause and effect where a simple action produces an appropriate response in order to stimulate the pupil and facilitate learning.
TileTalker can do this. At it's simplest, a page can be displayed with 2 tiles. Simple switch scanning can be enabled so the user presses a switch when the appropriate tile is highlighted and gets a response.
Here's a picture of such a screen currently in use at a local special school. Although you can't see it from the picture, if the user presses the switch at the appropriate time, Bart will yell "Aye Caramaba!" hit the switch at the wrong time and Marge will say "We're in serious trouble here", both in the voices of the original characters.
It's unbelievable the response that can be obtained from a pupil that can't communicate and likes the Simpson's when he can shout "Aye Caramba!" on demand!
As the pupil progresses, the pages can be made more complex by adding more tiles at a rate suitable to the user in question so there will be a gradual progression to more Simpson's characters(!) and then on to more serious matters such as selecting words and phrases to be spoken.
The Simpson's example is intended to show a training screen for the pupil to get used to the switch equipment, the longer term goal, of course, is to facilitate meaningful communication.
The picture and sound in each tile are entirely programmable and can be real photographs, graphics, PCS symbols, anything the user chooses or can find. Simply find the picture or sound and drag the file onto the tile. That's it! A simple drag and drop of a few blank tiles and you have an entire page setup and ready to be used!
A snap shot of any picture on the computer screen can be taken and inserted into a tile.
Similarly, the sounds are entirely user programmable. .WAV files, MP3s, or the user can record a sound directly into the tile to get real speech if the PC has a mircophone.
But what about the more advanced user?
Well, the EXACT same copy of the software can handle any number of users, limited only by the available memory, and each user can have as many pages as required and they can be as complex as he can handle.
This makes TileTalker ideal for school environments where each pupil will have widely different needs and the teacher can have a single version of the TileTalker software setup to run for every pupil in the class.
Here's a screen shot of a typical page for a more advanced user:
Click on the picture to see a full sized version.
In this case, sequential scanning (simply scanning each tile one after another until the correct tile is highlighted and then selecting it with a switch) is not really appropriate as it would take too long to scan between tiles so this user would use either:
A Row/Column scan. TileTalker scans the columns first until a switch selection is made. It then scans the row until a second selection is made and this selects the tile to act on.
A binary chop scan. Tiletalker scans the page in halves. The user select which half the required tile is in and then TileTalker scans that half in 2 parts and so on until the tile is selected. It sounds complicated but it the quickest possible way to select a single tile from a large grid using a single switch.
Of course, other options will also be available for those users that can handle more than 1 switch or who are able to control timing and dwell time of switches.
Remember, Axol Electronics is an electronics company so we do the interface electronics properly too!
Target prices for TileTalker software is under £100 including a 512MB USB memory stick with the software and basic pages installed allowing easy update and transfer of all your data seamlessly from one PC to another.
You have no idea how useful this is until you try it! The user need only carry a tiny USB key around and can get access to TileTalker and all his setup on any PC with a USB port.
For schools this allows a single copy of TileTalker to be carried from class to class, pupil to pupil, rather than bringing the pupil to the one PC with the software installed.
TileTalker will run on WindowsXP computers without needing to be installed. i.e. you aren't tied to one computer, and your user licence covers you to use the one copy on the USB key whichever PC it's plugged in to.
Group licences will be available, probably at 50% discount to the initial purchase price but with the condition that technical support will only be with the one holder of the group licence, and not the end user.
i.e. everyone in the licensed group will get the software at 50% of full price but support will come, not from Axol Electronics, but from the group licensee. We will only provide support to the one licensee.
Site licences will probably be made available, at a cost yet to be decided, under the same conditions as a group licence.
We may, in time, package the TileTalker software installed on a TabletPC, PalmTop or Laptop computer but the TileTalker software will always be sold separately for use on your own PC/laptop, you don't need to be tied to us for your hardware.
We do advise that all PCs have a USB port spare as our interface products, expected to become available starting late 2006, will most likely be USB devices.
The TileTalker software will operate with most current switches so if you already have a switch setup suitable for your own needs then you can just buy the software.
The above information is subject to change at any time as the products are still in development but the purpose of this page is to get found by search engines on the internet in advance of the product launch.