Researcher and project lead Rolf Black was commended for his work with the Tap & Talk Aphasia iPad Group and their iOS App “I have Aphasia” at this year’s Stephen Fry Engaged Researcher of the Year Awards.

Jon Urch, Chair of the selection panel: “The selection panel were extremely impressed by the impact that Rolf’s work is having in the aphasia community in Scotland and the UK. The positive impact Rolf and his work has on the lives of aphasia sufferers, especially their increase in self-confidence shone through in his presentation.

“The panel also noted Rolf’s passionate and creative leadership in his field, built on the strong relationships with members of the Aphasia iPad group. They were impressed with the reflection and growth demonstrated in the application and the future plans outlined within.”

Conor received a medal in the Student Research Competition (SRC) of the 20th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2018) on Wednesday 24^th October. Presenting his paper ‘Designing a Context Aware AAC Solution’, Conor made it through two rounds of competition to come in second place.

Picture to follow…

Our research group team is just back from Australia were they presented their work at this year’s conference of the International Society for Augmentative and Alternative Communication. Find out all about it on our special ISAAC page: aac.dundee.ac.uk/isaac2018/.

Lee Ridley, AKA Lost Voice Guy, and winner of this year Britain’s Got Talent programme (watch the revealing of the winner on Youtube) can’t talk but isn’t silent. One of the UK’s first stand-up comedians to use speech synthesis technology, for one night only Lee was performing his laugh out loud comedy during the Edinburgh International Science Festival (EISF) in the National Museum of Scotland (NMS) in Edinburgh.

The event was part of the EPSRC Telling Tales of Engagement project “More than just Computer Speech – giving People a Voice to tell their Story”, highlighting the impact of our research in AAC.

Congratulations to our students who graduated yesterday. Professor Annalu Waller introduced honorary graduate Dr Martin Pistorius at the Caird Hall event, who gave a wonderful speech and later handed out certificates and medals at the Bonar Hall reception.

The National Museum of Scotland featured a day of AAC at the beginning of the year with activities for all ages. The great hall in Edinburgh’s beautiful museum treasure was packed with opportunities to find out about how to create and use synthetic speech, how to paint using your eyes or even use your toes to chat like the famous Prof Stephen Hawking!

Find out more in our article about the day in the April ’18 CSWN Newsletter. Free to download for the ISAAC website: isaac-online.org/english/news/cswn-newsletter/

We’re in full swing preparing for our visit to Australia, presenting our work at this year’s 18th ISAAC Conference.

The conference is from the 21st to the 26th of July 2018 in Gold Coast, Australia.

We will give four platform presentations and one poster. Please find abstracts on our ISAAC 2018 page.

Lee Ridley is coming to Edinburgh’s National Museums Scotland as part of our EPSRC Telling Tales of Engagement project. Extremely funny, he uses an iPad communication aid to deliver his performance. Make sure you don’t miss it and take a look at all the other brilliant events during the Edinburgh International Science Festival!

“Join Lost Voice Guy, Lee Ridley stand-up comedian at the Edinburgh International Science Show at National Museum of Scotland on Thursday 12 April.

Lee Ridley, AKA Lost Voice Guy, can’t talk but isn’t silent. One of the UK’s first stand up comedians using speech synthesis technology, for one night only Lee will perform his laugh out loud comedy set as part of the Edinburgh International Science Festival.

Book now! https://www.nms.ac.uk/lostvoiceguy”

… and great ambassador for AAC. This morning, Stephen Hawking, the world renowned physicist died at the age of 76.

Listen to his interview on the BBC Desert Island Discs from 1992:

(might be only accessible when accessed from the UK)