Speech / Picture Exchange

Speech

This screen allows non verbal children, or children with difficulty verbalising, to construct sentences from a predefined list of images.

Any images can be installed on the Tablet computer, but as most kids doing this kind of program use PECS from Pyramid Consulting I have not included any images at all. The PECS stuff is all copyright and I don't want to infringe on them. Their stuff is very reasonable though and I have provided a link to their web shop in the downloads section.

The kids click on one image at a time to generate the sentence and then then can click the speech button to make the application eSpeak the sentence for them.

You can modify the speech settings through the parents app.

How to configure the speech tabs.

The application reads through the Speech folder configured in the parents app and looks for folders which have a corresponding JPG image. For instance the folder "2. Sentence Starters" and the image "2. Sentence Starters.JPG" must both exist for the tab to be created.

The application will create the tabs in alphabetical order so name the folders accordingly. I have prefixed the folder with a number for ease.

How to configure the images on the tabs.

Simply copy an image to the appropriate folder to make it appear on that tab.

The eSpeak integration will table the filename of the image as the word to say, so remember to name the images appropriately. For instance if you have 2 images for apples called apple1.jpg and apple2.jps then consider deleting one of them and just having apple.jpg - otherwise eSpeak could WILL pronounce the number as part of the word.

The PECS image set is very large, and there are probably too many images there for efficient use. Consider the words you child needs to use and cut the image set down to a more manageable level. Also, consider creating a favourites folder called "1. Favourites" which will hold frequently used words/expressions