Crick Software blog

Phil Hackett

Using Clicker Communicator for environmental control

13th June 2018

I love it when Clicker advocates come up with ingenious ways of using our software!

I recently had a meeting with David Banes, an Assistive Technology expert, who has worked alongside Crick Software in many projects.

David suggested that Clicker Communicator, our AAC iPad App, could also be used to interact with virtual assistants. This would enable users who find it difficult or impossible to communicate verbally to take control of their environment using only an iPad, Clicker Communicator, and a virtual assistant.

In the following example, I used Amazon’s Alexa to control some household lights.

Firstly, I set up a Vocabulary Set to speak the instructions ‘kitchen lights on’ and ‘kitchen lights off’ when the cells are selected.

Clicker Communicator_Amazon Alexa

Here is a video of it working:

In this second example, we can enable the user to choose the music they would like to listen to by constructing a sentence, and then making the sentence speak in the message area. The Google virtual assistant can then respond to their messages:

Clicker Communicator_virtual assistant

Thank you to David for this great idea! You can find out more about his access and inclusion strategies here - Access and Inclusion through Technology.

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