From the father of Robert Breeden
Date: 26 Feb 2015
"My son has been using Avaz on his Ipad with great success. My wife and I are very grateful for this app. His Ipad with AVAZ goes back and forth to school with him every day. He also has a smaller Android based tablet that has music and videos on it that he uses at home and takes with him shopping or going out to eat. Because of the smaller size it's a lot easier to use in the car and going places around town.
He does a lot more at school with the Avaz, his teacher refers to his Ipad as "His Lips". Robert is 15 years old and in 9th grade. Around home we use it for him to make decisions. He's only been using it for a few months now, but I'm sometimes shocked at what he can do with it. We've added pictures of all his favorite things to play, indoors and outdoors. Normally we have to prompt him by asking him what he would like to do. We also have all the family members listed. There are a few that live close by that we can walk to or take a short drive and he can pick from those if he wants to visit them.
We also use it for selecting food at home, when he has a choice. But it's a must to have when going out to eat and he can tell us what he wants to eat, what sides he wants and what drink. Sometimes when he gets to watching videos he gets really worked up and we can't tell if he's ok or not, and he's gotten to typing in either "I'm frustrated" or "I'm ok" If he is ok, we'll ask him to calm down and then leave him be. If he's frustrated, we have a folder and he can pick things from there that might help calm him, like his tight gloves, a chewy, weight vest or some other item. It's funny, he's much more efficient with the AVAZ when he is frustrated. I think it does him good to be able to express himself.
We've set up a number of things in a folder for when we go on vacation. So there are his basic things, like eating, going to bed, watching TV that we've just copied from other areas. Then there are things specific to the beach house we're renting, like going to the beach, going outside on the deck, or going to the pool. It's nice that we can copy things from one folder to another, and create a folder that has most things that apply to a specific situation in one location. I think one of his favorite things I added was all the sesame street characters and others of his favorites I found that were already in the app. While he doesn't use them in communicating, he will go in and look at their pictures and gets a big smile on his face.
Thank you for your help.
Jared Breeden"
Note: the above content has been published with the permission of Jared Breeden.