Hi Julia,
I think laser pointers and Alphacore are the next best things since sliced bread, but I'm clearly
biased ;-) (I make and sell laser pointer through my store.)
I had a number of clients who used their SGD for email and computer, but used their laser and a core vocabulary board for conversation.
2 questions for the list-
1. What size communication board do your clients end up selecting to use with a laser pointer?
2. When I did an assessment for a person to use a laser and a communication board, I would bring along a number of different sized boards, with different sized targets. The boards ranged in size from 11 x 17 to 24 x 36.
Sometimes a person would have a lot of head weakness, but could use a very large board if it were far away.
Sometimes a person would have lot of head weakness, but could use a smaller board, if it were closer to them.
Just by looking at the person, I could never tell which size board they would end up using without doing the assessment... I wondered if anyone else had observed that, and had noticed anything which might indicate on whether a person will end up using a larger or smaller sized board.
Thanks in advance,
Margaret
Margaret Cotts
P.S. Julia, I'm currently working on a hand-out, explaining why using a laser might be faster/easier to use than certain computer access methods. (Not that it's necessarily the right option for the person.)
If you would like, I'd be happy to send you a copy when I'm done (Or I can post it to my website).
From: "McCaffrey, Julia" <xxxxxx@cshs.org>
To: "xxxxxx@alsa.simplelists.com" <xxxxxx@alsa.simplelists.com>
Sent: Friday, August 19, 2016 12:56 PM
Subject: Head mounted laser pointer
I have loads of clients currently using low tech head mounted laser pointers in combination with communication boards (usually large mounted Alphacore board ).
Just curious to survey the group, do you also find this to be a popular solution? And if so, do you also have clients who seem to prefer to use the laser (in lieu of a high tech SGD) for face to face conversation, but then go on to use the SGD for other things (email, internet, etc)?
It's not a problem per se, as I'm happy they have effective communication either way, just still surprises me sometimes... :)