CommuniKate

The open AAC pageset

About CommuniKate

CommuniKate is a socially focused page set designed exclusively for people who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). It was designed so that it could be easily used in conjunction with a low-tech communication book and as a progression from a book to a dynamic display device.

CommuniKate is designed for people who rely heavily on the environment or context in order to communicate effectively but understand concepts and language used in conversation and during everyday activities. CommuniKate supports emerging literacy skills and enhances comprehension by using photographs and symbols to represent language.

CommuniKate was designed by Kate McCallum, who currently works as a Specialist Speech and Language Therapy Technician. She has worked in the field of AAC for the past 15 years and qualified as an Occupational Therapist in 2013.

What makes CommuniKate different for users?

CommuniKate isn’t only a standard page set, it’s an entirely free-to-use transferable page set. This means that there are no legal barriers preventing people from putting CommuniKate on any device at all. As a result if you are a CommuniKate user switching to, say, DynaVox, you can download the Dynavox version of CommuniKate and be able to use a familiar page set.

Creative Commons License
CommuniKate is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. This means that it can be altered, shared, reused, and grow, all for free.

We believe having open page sets are vital for the AAC community, and designed CommuniKate to best match that need. We could only make CommuniKate because of the amazing work of Straight Street who released their Mulberry Symbol set under an open licence.

Read, Play, and Share

CommuniKate is heavily documented, you can read all about its design and use in our 80page manual, and play with our online demos on the Open Voice Factory Page.

The demos are fully interactive online versions of the page set.

CK12

CommuniKate 12 is available in these formats:

Tobii Dynavox

Sensory Software

AssistiveWare

If you’d like to port CommuniKate 12 to a new device then you are absolutely free to do so! (we’d be very grateful if you’d send us the relevant files so that we can put them up here so other people can make use of them). If you’d just like to look at the page sets - then the PowerPoint design document is here.

CK20

CommuniKate 20 is available in these formats:

Tobii DynaVox

These version include some extra examples of birds in the animal category and several other minor language changes. (ht: Will Wade for the Compass conversion)

Sensory Software

You can also download these grid sets from Sensor Software’s bundle browser.

Techcess

You can also download them from the Techcess online browser. (ht: Will Wade and Ian Foulger).

CoughDrop

Thanks to Brian Whitmer for his endless support. CK20 is availible in CoughDrop

More Systems

If you’d like to port CommuniKate 20 to a new device then you are absolutely free to do so! (we’d be very grateful if you’d send us the relevant files so that we can put them up here so other people can make use of them). If you’d just like to look at the page sets - then the PowerPoint design document is here.

Low-tech

CommuniKate has been converted to a number of low tech formats.

Boards

Large boards that can be printed out for A3.

ICE

In case of emergency (ICE) cards fold up nicely to fit in a pocket and are used, as the name suggests for emergency situations like a medical problem. The content has been alterted to put medical matters first. More details can be found on this post.

You can also download these grid sets from Sensor Software’s bundle browser.

Books

You can directly use the CK20 and CK12 pptx templates to make commication books. There’s a good guide here. For convenience, we’ve linked to the templates again below, but they are the same files as above.