By Brandon Williamson, PRC-Saltillo Blogger
It's a great thing to talk to others. When I have long stories or messages that I want to tell to other people, I program a custom icon under a page set called “my pages.” I use an Accent 1000 with Unity 84 Sequenced, so I keep the personalized “my pages” icon located in activity row at the top of my home page for fast and easy access. By programming custom icons, I can quickly share longer messages or stories in just 2-hits from my “my pages” page. This is a lot easier than using my vocabulary set and typing out an entire story every time I want to share it.
Some items that I program in my “my pages” folder are: frequently asked questions, stories about things that I’ve done, phrases that I use often, getting to know you questions, and information about myself and my family. I also have another custom icon in activity row that is specifically for my day program, All R Friends. I labeled this button “Grove City” because my day program is located in Grove City, Ohio. In that page set I have buttons for conversations with specific people and phrases that I use for different jobs.
On an Accent with NuVoice, creating a custom page is easy. I pasted the programming instructions below.
CREATING and LINKING PAGES
- Be looking at the key that will link to the new page. Select Tools (icon in the top right corner), then Setup Key.
- Select the key that will link to the new page. (For me it was a key in activity row on the homepage)
- Select Change Icon to search for an icon.
- Select Spell Message or Define Key Function.
- Select Clear Display. Select Page Link.
- Decide if you want your page to automatically close after a key is selected (“close”) or remain open (“open”).
- Find and select the page you want to link if it is already created.
- If the page is not already created, select Create New Page, type the name of the page, and select OK. Choose a keyboard size (to format a new page like an already existing page, select Create Page from Template). Select OK.
- Select Change Label to change the label. Labels for page links are typically in all CAPS in Unity.
- Select OK.
Here is a link with programming instructions from the PRC website for an Accent with NuVoice.
Here is a link with programming instructions from the PRC website for an Accent with Empower.
Since it’s the holiday season, I recently programmed icons to have a great talking conversation with family by asking new questions and also programmed icons with jokes to get the family laughing. I am going to encourage you to try doing the same thing. Happy Holidays.
Communicators In Action - programming, aac, accent, prc, saltillo, unity, minspeak, communication, pragmatics