Visual Planet

The Project "Planeta Visual" arose from an investigation-action process carried out by a group of professionals whose practice has been linked to ASDs. Nowadays they develop their professional work in Jean Piaget Special Education School in Zaragoza.

The objective of "Planeta visual" is to guide the planning of the psychoeducational intervention in the nuclear dimensions of autism spectrum, facilitating the formation of objectives, the selection of contents and methodological strategies. On the other hand,  it offers a resource bank (self-elaborated, commercials and documentaries) structured in areas and levels. The "Inventario de Espectro Autista" (Riviére, 1997) is taken as the backbone of all the information.

Download ISO (2Gb) || Planeta Visual Online

Art and Nature Centre of Beulas Foundation (Huesca)

The Art and Nature Centre (CDAN) of Beulas Foundation (Huesca) with Arantza Gracia y Elena del Diego leading the didactic area, decided to adapt the guides for families with pictograms for the temporary exhibitions. For this purpose, they chose ARASAAC's pictograms. We really liked the idea and, of course, helped them with everything they needed.

The Art and Nature Centre is a must-visit and shows permanent collections and temporary exhibitions of contemporary art. If you want to know it better, apart from visiting their webpage, you should go there and see the different programs it offers.

The guides for familes are didactic materials given at CDAN's reception for reference and must be returned at the end of the visit.  There are two types of guides according to the ages of the children using them: 4-7 years and 8-12 years. The guides allow the families to follow a nice route along the exhibition, ending with a practice at CDAN's cafeteria. 

The adaptation of the guides with ARASAAC's pictograms allows both little children -who can't read- and people with limitations for communication to access the contents of the exhibitions.

If you want to see the guides, go to the "Research and Training" section and in the pull-down menu, click on the option Educational Projects.

(Only available in the Spanish version) Then click on "Público Infantil no escolar".


And there you will find the "Guía de Familia".


Finally, here you have some screen shots of the guides...


We’d like to finish congratulating CDAN for their great job and thanking them for having thought in ARASAAC as the system of communication through pictograms for their guides.

Signposting of CRMF in Salamanca

Salamanca's Recovery Centre for the Physically Handicapped has signposted five floors, including the basement. The signposting has been carried out according to types of rooms and floors. In each room they place a plaque, designed by the company PUNTODIS, and in each of them, they include the text in high contrast, the text in Braille and the pictogram of ARASAAC.

Basement (33 signs) See basement signs in pdf.

Ground Floor (48 signs) See Ground Floor signs in pdf.


First Floor (58 signs) See First Floor signs in pdf.

Second Floor (38 signs) See Second Floor signs in pdf.


Third Floor (25 signs) See Third Floor signs in pdf.


In order to develop all this work, there has been a close cooperation with the CRMF of Salamanca and, as in every collaboration, we all have come out of it better off.

For ARASAAC, it has meant a significant enrichment of the vocabulary of the Portal's internal database because, apart from the already existing pictograms, we have had to design pictograms which didn't appear in our catalogs. As for the institutions, it has implied the disposal of a signposting catalog, which will improve the accessibility to their spaces within the spheres of communication.

To finish, we'd like to congratulate the CRMF of Salamanca for their great job and thank them for having thought in ARASAAC as the system of communication through pictograms for their signposting.

Àuria Private Foundation in Igualada

Àuria Private Foundation in Igualada, a nonprofit organization specialized in handicapped adults assistance, has developed a wonderful signposting job for their spaces creating signs which include text in high contrast, real pictures, pictograms and text in Braille. The part of the signposts that uses pictograms is wholly created with ARASAAC.

The signposting of their new building includes:

• Building signposts. Each plaque includes text, pictogram and fingerspelling alphabet. There is also a space left for the text in Braille.  

• Plaque placed in each of the building floors where the rooms and spaces in each of the building floors are specified. The plaque includes text and pictogram. There is also a space left for the text in Braille.

To finish, we'd like to thank Àuria Foundation for their effort and generosity at the time of sharing the signposting with all of us so that each centre can adapt it to their needs.

Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Coordinator: Clara I. Delgado Santos (Ceapat-Imserso) 
Authors: Dolores Abril, Clara I. Delgado, Lucía Pérez-Castilla, Margarita Sebastián and Ángela Vigara del Ceapat-Imserso, ARASAAC and Fundosa-Accesibilidad 
Pictograms: ARASAAC Portal; Creative Commons License(BY-NC-SA) 
Edition: May 2010

This document is an adaptation in pictograms of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, ratified by Spain and into effect since May 3rd 2008.

This publication, coordinated and carried out by Ceapat-Imserso in close collaboration with the Aragonese Portal of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (ARASAAC) and Fundosa Accesibilidad, will allow those people using Pictographic Systems for communication to access the content of the Convention, on equal terms with all the citizens, in a language adapted to their needs.

For ARASAAC Portal it has meant a significant improvement of the vocabulary database as well as the incorporation of new abstract terms which are usual in the world of disabilities (integration, discrimination, equality, ...)

It has also obliged us to create a grammar of ARASAAC pictograms use in order to give linguistic coherence to all the document.

DOWNLOAD CONVENTION PDF

Aragón Radio 2: The accessible radio

Aragón's autonomic radio, through its second channel, www.aragonradio2.com, joined to the project of the Centro Aragonés de Tecnologías para la Educación (CATEDU ), the Special Education Public School Alborada and the I3A ( Engineering Investigation Institute of Aragón) to offer a new language to handicapped people in April 2010.

Two of the most important pieces of news on autonomic and national information will be offered in conventional text and ARASAAC pictograms each day. With this initiative, Aragón Radio tries to spread the work that is being done by these institutions in favour of making communication and access to information to handicapped people.

Without any doubt this a great initiative for all the society because it makes our aim of making communication a universal right much closer.

Posters

The APNABA association (Autist Children Parents Association from Badajoz) has organized a season of Autism and Cinema in which the poster has been created using ARASAAC pictograms. 

This season has two different parts:

The first of them are morning sessions aimed to those High Schools that have pupils with Autist Spectre Disorders. "Mozart and the Whale" will be displayed for them, and it tells the love story of to people with Asperger Syndrome. In addition, we will also display a short film in which we can see the integration of a student with Asperger Syndrome in an ordinary school. We will also hand some comics with tips to improve how to communicate and mix with these students.

On the other hand,  the showings aimed to all the people, along with a short informative video about the services our association gives, will be displayed in the evening. The movies are the following:"Mozart and the Whale" and "A winter night dream", a film that tells the story of a mother and her ASD daughter during the days that followed the Balkans war.

Without any doubt this is an interesting proposal that will help to improve our knowledge about TEA in an amusing and present way.

UTAC-CACE pictographic communicator

The Augmentative Techniques of Communication’s Unit  (UTAC) is a service outside of the School of Psychology, University of Barcelona, designed for people with motor disabilities who require augmentative and alternative systems of communication and support technologies for computer access, adapted play and adapted furniture. UTAC users are children, youth, adults and elderly with cerebral palsy, injuries, neurological or muscular diseases, aphasia and other causes that prevent or interfere with oral language, handwriting, mobility and environmental control. 

Within your team, we can find professionals with a high prestige in the world of SAACs as Emili Soro-Camats, Carme Basil, Carme Rosell and Judith Boix. 

This team has developed a pictographic UTAC-CACE communicator. The Communicator includes a proposed nuclear vocabulary, configurable for each user, and is organized by categories in different interactive displays. 

In its free distribution, has been used to support the implementation of Jordi Lagares Plaphoons and ARASAAC pictograms. This application enables the of use various displays, bound together, as a communicator or print them in isolation for communication displays or notebooks.

On the download page we can access the version Plaphoons pictograms ARASAAC in Castilian and pictograms Plaphoons version ARASAAC in Catalan, both developed by Marc Coronas.

Kiosk-bar Alborada

"A project-based learning environments in transition to adult life: a kiosk-Bar", a project developed by  C.E.E. "Alborada", which focuses on the students who study the stage to Adult Life Transition (TVA), although in its development have been involved other students at school.

The Kiosk project-Bar allows TVA students to acquire basic skills in autonomy and personal initiative on the one hand, and social and citizenship, on the other, achieving further development of functional skills in communication, and the mathematical area. With the launch of a learning environment similar to a bar, kiosk or stall, the tasks our students have had to manage have been those associated with kitchen, bar organisation, customer service, accounting, cleaning, order and printing.

In the same way it has promoted learning related to house care, cleaning, care and organization, and the purchase and money.

With this in mind Kiosk-Bar Alborada has developed as a real environment of participation in which students routinely perform with great functionality, so the generalization runs parallel to the very real learning in this context.

ISAAC Congress Web 2010 Barcelona

ISAAC works by and for people from all over the world who cannot speak. ISAAC is composed of several thousand members in 60 countries and has 16 subsidiaries, working to help everyone to communicate. 

Next summer will be held in Barcelona from 24 to 29 July, the 14th Biennial Conference of ISAAC (International Society for Augmentative and Alternative Communication), under the theme: Communicating worlds. 

In this conference, families meet users and professionals involved in the field of augmentative and alternative communication. Through various presentations, communications, workshops, exhibitions and other events we can get to know the latest works, research and materials related to this issue. 

One of the highlights that are taking place on the occasion of these biennial conferences is the translation of the conference website to the most common systems in augmentative communication (SPC, Bliss and Rebus). This year, as a novelty, this list has been expanded with the addition of ARASAAC as one of the languages of the congress. The translation of the web, is just not limited to the various menu items, but also complemented by a brief explanation of each of the sections. 

If you want to see the implementation of ARASAAC on the conference website, it can be accessed from this address: http://www.isaac2010.org/index.php

Augmentative and Alternative Communication. Reference Guide

Authors: Dolores Abril Abadín, Clara I. Delgado Santos, Ángela Vigara Cerrato. Coordinate: Clara I. Delgado Santos. Madrid: CEAPAT, 2010

This document is a guide with basic information on alternative and augmentative systems of communication. 

With this publication, the CEAPAT wishes to stress the importance of communication in the social integration of people, and describe the major products of support, access devices and alternative models for the representation of language. 

Augmentative and Alternative Communication presented in the current context of the new Spanish and international law, which is reinforcing the presence of these systems to improve the participation and inclusion of people with specific needs for communication.

Download pdf

"MENUDAS IDEAS”. Familiar and infants entertainment’s Guide in Zaragoza (Spain)

With monthly periodicity and free distribution, the new publication is distributed through retailers and public and private schools that schedule activities for children (Arbolé theater, entertainment centers and children's clubs, libraries and recreation centers, restaurants and bars "friends children ", shops, libraries ...). We want to emphasize this publication not only for its gratuity and scope of dissemination but also because it makes use of pictograms ARASAAC on its pages. 

• Nº 1 - September 2009 DOWNLOAD.
• Nº 2 - October 2009 DOWNLOAD
• Nº 3 - November 2009 DOWNLOAD
• Nº 4 - December 2009 DOWNLOAD
• Nº 5 - January 2010 DOWNLOAD
• Nº 6 - February 2010 DOWNLOAD
• Nº 7 - March 2010 DOWNLOAD
• Nº 8 - April 2010 DOWNLOAD
• Nº 9 - May 2010 DOWNLOAD
• Nº 10 - June 2010 DOWNLOAD

With this initiative, the editors have decided to fill the existing information gap in the city, and present in an attractive layout, reviews,  proposals and programming of interest to children and family in order for them to enjoy at maximum  the options of leisure and free time the city offers.

The first issue, with 36 color pages and a circulation of 8,000 copies, presents  the children's agenda in September in Zaragoza, book recommendations, hiking and supportive suggestions and introduces magazine’s mascots:  Croas and Buzz, a frog and a fly that curiously are friends and have lots of plans for great fun.

OMAC Malaga City Council

From Malaga City Council, as a part of its Strategic Plan for Universal Access, it was launched in 2008 a project for which all the municipal offices of Care for Citizenship (OMAC) will be fully accessible in terms of communication, to enable all citizens access to information and transactions are handled there. The Municipal Office for Attention to Citizens District “Carretera de Cádiz” was the first municipal unit in which they have completely eliminated the barriers to communication. 

The actions focus on the signs indicative of services through pictograms, including those of ARASAAC (you can see two of them in this article), a service guide in Braille, installing video cameras to facilitate communication between deaf users, the presence of a sign language interpreter from Accessibility department of Malaga City Council and creating communication books to facilitate attention to citizen present problems of language or understanding. 

The project was carried out from the Universal Access department of the City of Malaga and has enjoyed the cooperation of the Development Partnership "Malaga More Accessible". 

It has been developed a preliminary study of the needs that people with communication problems have. The group of people with communication problems who are being targeted in this project comprises groups with sensory deficits (blindness, deafness or both), intellectual disability, people with oral language difficulties or lack of it, illiterate persons and children of different ages, the elderly, those who temporarily can have some communication difficulty and all who are not familiar or fluent in Castilian. 

For marking of spaces and services, it has been installed in the building a new set of marking of spaces and services provided by the OMAC, intended to be as understandable as possible for everyone. 104 pictograms have been developed, some specifically designed to define some as the certifying paperwork, procedure or file. 

They join those on the different types of civil marriages, whether they are heterosexual or homosexual, tax payments, etc ... 

We also carried out a preliminary study for the location, lighting, contrast, typography, colors and texts of the signals.

Information extracted from Document: ACCESSIBILITY AND COGNITIVE ABILITIES: mobility in urban ONCE Foundation.