Reviews

Closing the Gap
June 1999

Clicker: A new tool for access, communication and literacy
Product Spotlight: Clicker
By John Crick

For many years I worked as a teacher with children with physical disabilities. A number of our students accessed their computers through switches, using what we would now call an on-screen scanning keyboard. Many of the kids I worked with also had learning difficulties, and many had communication needs too. Sometimes setting up the computer for a just short communication, writing or learning activity seemed to take forever, and required a level of technical know-how that was not shared by all of the staff. I had a vision for a piece of software that would address these central needs of our students in a way that would enable a therapist, teacher or classroom assistant to set up an activity in a few seconds.

So it was that in 1993 I gave up my teaching job and began writing the first version of what came to be called Clicker.

Clicker is an unusually flexible talking on-screen keyboard that operates within its own window and can be used alongside any other application. The Clicker window is called a grid, and is made up of ‘cells’. Cells can hold letters, words, phrases and pictures. The grid scans, and when a cell is chosen with a switch, typically the text within the cell is sent to a word processor.

An able user can enter one letter at a time. A younger student can learn how to build sentences by entering whole words. With the latest version, Clicker 3, which has its own built-in talking word processor, you can even write with pictures. Cells can also play sounds and talk with synthetic speech. Crucially, cells can open up other grids. Each grid is stored as a separate file, so you can use this method to link together as many grids as you like, giving the student access to an unlimited number of cells.

The question is, how could we really give teachers, therapists and parents the opportunity to set up grids for individual students? Without doubt, the single most important thing about Clicker is the ease of use in setting up the grids. The contents of the cells can be changed at any time, without the need for a separate editing program – you just hold the Shift key, click on the cell and edit it. You can change pictures and text even while the grid is being scanned. Clicker supports JPEG and GIF files, making it easier to use pictures from a digital camera or a Web site. You can create new grids, make new links, and do anything you want – all without leaving the program.

It was only when Clicker came quite close to completion that I realized how useful it would be in regular education for the many students who have difficulties learning to read and write. So a version was produced that worked with just the mouse. This became a best seller and an award-winning educational program.

The proof that Clicker really works is not just the awards it has won. It is the creative way that teachers are using it, creating activities for their students activities that I had never even thought of when I designed the program! Thousands of teachers, not just the technically able, are using the program creatively. Those with more experience are able to extend the use of Clicker to create switch controlled talking books and other multimedia activities. These are made by dropping a graphic onto the background of an empty grid, then putting cells on top. These cells can be invisible, but can still scan, so the user can explore ‘hot spots’ on the grid.

The really creative teachers are doing amazing things. Just recently I was sent a zip disk containing Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol –made with Clicker grids as a talking book that can be accessed with a single switch. We hope to be publishing this – perhaps you will see or hear it at this year’s Closing the Gap conference – if you hear some ghostly sounds drifting down the booths, you’ll know what it is! Then there was the special school that used a digital camera and Clicker to make a multimedia guide to the school. Click on a room on the plan, and you are taken into that room. Click on the students sitting in the room, and they speak to you in their own voices!

Clicker is also makes an extremely flexible communication aid. Pictures and/or words selected by the user can speak either single words or whole phrases. Because grids can easily be linked, one grid can act as a menu to many other grids. If they wish, users can flip between their communication grids and grids they use for controlling a word processor. If users have a recent version of Penfriend, word prediction is integrated into the Clicker grid. In addition, pictures appear automatically in Clicker Writer as you type (whether using the keyboard or switches). As you press space at the end of a word, Clicker searches for a graphic of the same name. If you type house, a house appears above the word. You can use any graphic library for this. There are over 400 supplied with Clicker, or you may prefer to use the Mayer-Johnson PCS library.

You can even jump to your favourite Web page on the Internet straight from a Clicker cell!

Throughout the development of the various versions of Clicker, teachers and therapists have been involved. We now have around 80 ‘Clicker Centres’ - computer and special needs centres from all around the UK. Clicker centres send representatives to our regular ‘Clicker days’ in Northamptonshire where we exchange ideas and feedback. This is what has made Clicker what it is. Indeed, we very much value feedback from all our users, and have set up a special email address – <feedback@cricksoft.com>.

Closing the Gap is the US organisation for Computer Technology in Special Education and Rehabilitation. For further information see www.closingthegap.com

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