Expert-based Assessment of an Augmentative and Alternative Communication Tool

Nowadays, current technology provides new challenges to improve skills on people with special necessities. In fact, persons with communications needs can take advantage of new devices and mobile applications to interact and communicate easily and in the most straightforward way. In this paper, we present Easy Communicator application (ECO), an Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) tool that facilitates functional communication to people with complex communication needs. ECO provides a user interface intended for both final users and experts/educators, allowing to configure the most important options for a suitable communication session. This system takes two different views into account: the Communication Manager and the Communication User. We have analyzed ECO and carried out a formative evaluation with experts, mainly related to the Manager Communication view. The idea was to assess usability and accessibility concerning AAC tools. This way, we asked evaluators to walkthrough the tool and complete two different questionnaires intended to measure perceived usability and check the most important accessibility requirements. Results were positive and provided evidences of usability and the achievement of accessibility requirements. All in all, such results will be used to refine existing requirements and create new ones to improve the tool and accomplish a summative evaluation with final users.