The speech app I use on my Ipad is Proloquo2go, a very kind gift from the guys I work with at school. It’s quite an advanced app, as far as such things go: it is a Minspeak-based system, but also has an ordinary qwerty keyboard mode which I use. For those who don’t know, Minspeak is a symbol-based system where you select combinations of symbols to get the device to say words or sentences. I’ve never got into it, but I’ve had friends/acquaintances who swear by it, and say it’s a far quicker form of AAC.
A few days ago, then, I began wondering whether it was worth giving it a go. After all, Proloquo2go always boots up with the symbol screen, and I have to deliberately switch to qwerty. Having always typed ‘normally’, can I now learn a new system? How hard can it be? Might I indeed begin to ‘talk’ more quickly? Having watched a couple of Youtube videos about it, I must admit I’m curious. I’ll now sit down and fiddle with my Ipad, and see if I can get it to say anything. After all, in the current lock-down circumstances, teaching myself a new skill seems like a good idea.
The Ill-Informed Ramblings of a Cripple 
As an experiment you should type out “1 pint of IPA and a large Hawaiian pizza” in the different formats. Whichever is quickest wins.
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That is more or less what I tried to make it say earlier: it took too long to find the correct icons, but it might just need getting used to it. (Or, more likely, I might just forget the whole idea and stick to typing)
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Proloquo is not a minspeak based system. Learning a minspeak based system is like learning a whole new language and it takes some time to get good at it. However, it is worth it as research repeatedly shows it is a lot quicker than any other method and is infinitely adaptable. It’s best learned in a structured way, preferable with an experiened SLT who knows minspeak.
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Ok, cool. While I didn’t get that far with my fairly superficial investigations yesterday, it’s definitely something I want to continue to look into.
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