Still having his say: David Yoder's legacy in AAC.

On February 2 2023, one of the guiding lights in the field of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) for more than four decades, David E. Yoder, passed away at the age of 90. A voracious reader and gifted storyteller, David was particularly fond of a quote from George Bernard Shaw's Back to Methuselah, "You see things; and you say 'Why?' but I dream things that never were; and I say 'Why not?'" That vision led him to take on multiple leadership roles and influence the field of AAC in multiple ways. He played a pivotal role in establishing both the International Society for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (ISAAC) and the United States Society for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (USSAAC). Additionally, he chaired the panel for the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR)'s inaugural Consensus Validation Conference on AAC, advocated for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association to recognize AAC within the profession's scope of practice, and served as the first editor for the Augmentative and Alternative Communication journal. In this tribute, we describe David's diverse and unique contributions to improving the lives of people with communication challenges with a focus on some of his central insights and actions.

An Open-source Tool for Simplifying Computer and Assistive Technology Use: Tool for simplification and auto-personalization of computers and assistive technologies.

Computer access is increasingly critical for all aspects of life from education to employment to daily living, health and almost all types of participation. The pandemic has highlighted our dependence on technology, but the dependence existed before and is continuing after. Yet many face barriers due to disability, literacy, or digital literacy. Although the problems faced by individuals with disabilities have received focus for some time, the problems faced by people who just have difficulty in using technologies has not, but is a second large, yet less understood problem. Solutions exist but are often not installed, buried, hard to find, and difficult to understand and use. To address these problems, an open-source extension to the Windows and macOS operating systems has been under exploration and development by an international consortium of organizations, companies, and individuals. It combines auto-personalization, layering, and enhanced discovery, with the ability to Install on Demand (IoD) any assistive technologies a user needs. The software, called Morphic, is now installed on all of the computers across campus at several major universities and libraries in the US and Canada. It makes computers simpler to use, and allows whichever features or assistive technologies a person needs to appear on any computer they encounter (that has Morphic on it) and want to use at school, work, library, community center, etc. This demonstration will cover both the basic and advanced features as well as how to get free copies of the open-source software and configure it for school, work or personal use. It will also highlight lessons learned from the placements.

Mental workload during brain-computer interface training.

It is not well understood how people perceive the difficulty of performing brain-computer interface (BCI) tasks, which specific aspects of mental workload contribute the most, and whether there is a difference in perceived workload between participants who are able-bodied and disabled. This study evaluated mental workload using the NASA Task Load Index (TLX), a multi-dimensional rating procedure with six subscales: Mental Demands, Physical Demands, Temporal Demands, Performance, Effort, and Frustration. Able-bodied and motor disabled participants completed the survey after performing EEG-based BCI Fitts' law target acquisition and phrase spelling tasks. The NASA-TLX scores were similar for able-bodied and disabled participants. For example, overall workload scores (range 0-100) for 1D horizontal tasks were 48.5 (SD = 17.7) and 46.6 (SD 10.3), respectively. The TLX can be used to inform the design of BCIs that will have greater usability by evaluating subjective workload between BCI tasks, participant groups, and control modalities. PRACTITIONER SUMMARY: Mental workload of brain-computer interfaces (BCI) can be evaluated with the NASA Task Load Index (TLX). The TLX is an effective tool for comparing subjective workload between BCI tasks, participant groups (able-bodied and disabled), and control modalities. The data can inform the design of BCIs that will have greater usability.