Slowly, slowly. The vocab is coming together – we are over 1000 words in, and working through the list of 1000 most common words in Lakota. There will be substantially more words in the vocab out of this, because there is no good way in any AAC apps that we can find for managing verb conjugations the way Lakota (and many other languages) do them. I’ll get the base words all added, then go back and add conjugations.
We have a plan to get a voice made. We need at least 10 hours of recordings with text (currently, we’d prefer LLC orthography, because the vast majority of the materials we have use it, and once the voice is made, it’ll be fairly easy to change to any other orthography, I think). Once the initial voice is ready, we’ll need to sort out some grant funding to get improvements made.
We need some beta testers. We have a fundraiser in the planning stages for April for Autism Month. And we now have a license to create and sell activities using boardmaker symbols. We know we’re going to need more symbols made, and we have a plan for that too. So, it’s all coming together.
Are you a Lakota language teacher interested in bringing special ed students into your classroom? Or are you teaching in another Indigenous language and looking for ideas for AAC? Contact us and let’s see what we can create together!
0 Comments