Alternative And Complementary Communication Systems

1. SYSTEM OF PICTOGRAPHIC SYMBOLS FOR COMMUNICATION
2.BLISS SYSTEM
3. SIGN LANGUAGE
4.BIMODAL SYSTEM

It is mainly based on pictographic symbols, that is, simple drawings and icons. Each symbol appears accompanied by the word it represents, and in the case of too abstract terms, only the written word may appear.

This system of pictographic symbols has the following characteristics:
• They represent the most common words and concepts in everyday language.
• It can be used by different age groups.
• Quickly and easily distinguishable symbols.

Thus, pictograms constitute a resource capable of adapting to various communicative purposes in teaching that takes place in contexts of diversity.
Especially for students with special educational needs and language impairments, they are an essential support that facilitates the understanding of "their world" and the messages of their environment.
"Offering them illustrations is expanding their borders, giving them a new world full of possibilities, full of sensations that we can extrapolate to other facets of learning," says Amparo Ruiz Espinosa.

The vocabulary is divided into six categories and each symbol is coloured according to the category to which it belongs, for example people is yellow, verbs is green, names is orange, adjectives are blue.
This colour code has the following advantages: facilitating a faster location, restructuring simple sentences and motivating the child.

When applying this method, some considerations must be taken into account:
• Suitable for people with a simple expressive language level.
• Not suitable for people with visual problems.
• Subjects must possess a minimum of cognitive abilities.
• The subject must feel the need to communicate.
• All the people involved must show patience to teach it.

In addition to using another sensory channel, sight, one of its greatest advantages is that they are not ephemeral, like spoken or signed messages, but are tangible and remain in time and space, allowing anyone to access it at all moment.

The pictograms are are especially helpful for students with difficulties with attention, memory, language, and pervasive developmental disorders.

They can be beneficial to structure the school day by creating INFORMATION PANELS. They indicate the sequence of activities to be carried out during the day. They give a lot of security and tranquillity to the student, they allow him to “structure himself” and to be able to anticipate what comes next.

Also, we can create communication or vocabulary books, boards to express emotions, daily planners ... to help children who need this support to achieve communication.

‒ The ARASAAC portal offers everything you need to create or use materials already created and ready to print. You can find black and white pictograms, colour or you can even store your own images.
‒ Another very useful and super practical tool is ARAWORD, you can download it for free and it is very simple and intuitive to use (it is basically like a Word but everything you write is converted into a pictogram). An idea to use it is to adapt stories because it can be copied and pasted directly and thus in a moment you can have a story or a pictographic narration created.
‒ Also, Board Maker is used to elaborate the pictograms, a software specialized in editing communication boards.

This system of symbols that uses shapes to convey meanings, are basic geometric shapes (square, circle ...) and each one is associated with a specific meaning. They can combine with each other to form new meanings. The symbols are grouped into four categories:

‒ Pictographic symbols: immortalize the shape of what it represents.
‒ Ideographic symbols: they do not immortalize the image, but they evoke it.
‒ Arbitrary symbols: they cannot be reasoned.
‒ Combined symbols: combination of the above.

One characteristic is that symbols are grouped into categories that are given a specific colour.

The subject has a board where the symbols are in a specific order, each one is written down what it means, thus facilitating interpretation for people who do not know the method and want to communicate with the subject.

ADVANTAGES:
‒ Easy to learn
‒ Easy generalization
‒ They contribute to mental structuring
‒ They help the acquisition of reading

Mimic language, manual or gestural, is one of the languages used by subjects with hearing impairment, it consists of signs made with the hands and fingers, accompanied by gestures.

Within the mimic language, we can differentiate Sign Language: or manual alphabet, it represents each of the letters of the alphabet by means of different configurations of the hand. It is done with one hand and usually serves as a complement to sign language to designate proper names or terms without translation. It can be very useful for word spelling.

It is not universal, which means that deaf people from different countries (or even from the same country, but from a different city) use different signs. (hand configuration, location, movement)

The term bimodal was introduced by Schlesinger (1978) to designate the association of two modalities: signed and spoken.

It is defined as an oralist method, since the signs accompany the oral language and follow its structure. The language that marks the grammatical structure is oral.

The bimodal system helps the learning of oral language for deaf people who want to learn it and also serves as an augmentative communication system for people with severe oral expression difficulties.

This type of communication performs two clear functions:
• Develop subject communication
• Allow the learning of oral language

In educational practice, both teachers, families ..., should use this method for communication. The signs must be learned naturally, as the student's needs arise, although it is convenient to work on some in a more systematic way, such as spatial, temporal, causal notions, categories and specific questIONS