Prototype-driven software development process for augmentative and alternative communication applications

Abstract

The paper presents software development model for implementation of communication and education applications based on Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC). Target user group of these applications are people with disabilities, specifically people with complex communication needs. Development process of such applications should follow specific principles to successfully implement all functional and accessible features that applications should contain in order to be accessible and highly usable. Furthermore, development process should be enriched with specific methodologies and approaches in its particular phases in order to fully exploit a necessary synergy of multidisciplinary team consisting of experts from information and communication technology, rehabilitation and education, psychology and graphic design. The presented model was defined during extensive developmental activities over two years period and evaluated on the number of publicly available case-study web and mobile AAC applications.