OpenAAC

AAC Vocabulary

If you haven't been involved in AAC for long, you may not realize just how different AAC layouts can be. Some approaches work to include as many fringe words as possible, some focus on minimizing button hits or keeping organization intuitive. It's great to have variety! It's also important to understand what approaches are used where, which can affect which apps you choose to work with.

Vocabularies aren't Apps

Sometimes people start equating AAC apps with AAC vocabularies, especially since some apps only offer a single vocabulary. It's important, though, to remember that the organization and strategy of an AAC vocabulary is different than the technical features of the apps that deliver the vocabulary. Thinking vocabulary-specific helps us identify patterns and approaches that are used across apps, and that work best for different use cases.

We have created an evaluation engine that measures the efficiency of selecting a collection of core and fringe words, specific sequenced sentences, and other criteria, to come up with an apples-to-apples comparison of different AAC vocabularies. We call this the CARE (Core, Access, Repeatability, Effort) Efficiency Score, and we hope it can provide value as people consider different AAC apps and vocabularies for use.

AAC Vocabularies

Is your vocabulary missing from our list? Let us know and we'll get it added! Please consider providing a .obz file containing your vocabulary to make it easier for us to process it.