Assistive Social Interaction for Non-Speaking People Living in the Community
Nick Hine, John L. Arnott · 2002 · Proceedings of the Fifth International ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '02) · doi:10.1145/638249.638279
Summary
This paper addresses the social isolation experienced by non-speaking people living independently in the community, a problem intensified by the shift from institutional to community-based care in the UK. The authors argue that while community care aims to improve quality of life, it can paradoxically increase isolation — particularly for people with speech or language impairments who already face barriers to social participation. Research cited shows that 35% of people with disabilities feel not at all involved in their local community, and that one-third of surveyed disabled and elderly people felt they most needed help with social aspects of daily living. The paper draws on communication theory and social psychology to argue that storytelling — sharing personal experiences through pictures, video, and audio — is a fundamental and powerful form of social interaction that has been largely overlooked in AAC. Traditional AAC systems focus on functional, transactional communication rather than the social, narrative exchanges through which people build relationships and express identity. The authors developed a multimedia story-telling service that allows non-speaking users to create and share personal narratives composed of pictures, video clips, and audio clips organised by topics and sub-topics, stored in a database and presented through a web browser interface.
Key findings
The multimedia communication service was designed with a web-based architecture using a database engine, HTML/ASP pages, and a media file store, accessible through a standard web browser. Stories are organised hierarchically by topic, with each story containing up to five media items (pictures, video, or audio) each accompanied by a single descriptive text phrase. The interface provides quick-jump links for navigation between story elements. Testing showed that this multimedia approach enabled users to retrieve story elements more quickly than a text-only interface, and that viewers gained a more accurate version of the story and formed a stronger impression of the presenter's personality compared to conventional text/symbol AAC output. The service was integrated with an H.323-standard web-based videoconferencing system, allowing the story-telling interface to appear alongside live video and text chat in a multi-frame web page. Two non-speaking users populated the service with approximately 15 stories each using pictures, video clips, and audio clips. In peer demonstrations, audiences agreed that the multimedia storytelling approach engaged them more effectively than conventional AAC output, conveying personality and narrative richness that symbol-based speech generation could not.
Relevance
This paper highlights an often-neglected dimension of communication accessibility: social and narrative interaction as opposed to purely functional communication. Most AAC research and development focuses on enabling users to make requests, answer questions, and convey basic needs — what the authors term transactional communication. But social connection, identity expression, and storytelling are equally vital human needs that standard AAC systems serve poorly. The multimedia storytelling approach anticipates contemporary social media and visual communication platforms, where sharing photos, videos, and personal narratives is the primary mode of social engagement. For accessibility practitioners today, this work raises important questions about whether current social media platforms adequately support users with complex communication needs, and whether the emphasis on text-based and real-time communication in social platforms inherently excludes people who communicate through alternative means. The integration of pre-composed multimedia narratives with videoconferencing also foreshadows modern hybrid communication approaches where asynchronous content creation supplements real-time interaction.
Tags: AAC · social isolation · community care · videoconferencing · multimedia · storytelling · social interaction · remote communication · independent living · speech impairment
Standards referenced: H.323