European Perspectives

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Comment by Lyndon Owen on April 14, 2009 at 3:25am

I had a meeting with Via Libre who are the OT wing of ONCE. ONCE are extremely interesting how they went about generating funding - they started a Spanish Lottery and created a foundation trust. Originally, as you mention, it was for visual impairment, but now they have established several other wings. Oddly, considering the variety of different countries I've experienced with the AAC market, the quality of their premises and facilities are amongst the best I've ever seen. Without doubt they ARE the major presence in AAC in Spain. Also Via Libre are only one of two companies (the other being B&J in Barcelona) who actually undertake and R&D.

Comment by AbilityNet - David Banes on April 8, 2009 at 2:10pm

Hi Lyndon

Out of interest did you have any discussions with ONCE whilst you were there - much of the developmnet work both for people with a Visual Imopairment and more widely seems to be driven by ONCE - but to what extent that reaches AAC users I dont know

Comment by Lyndon Owen on April 8, 2009 at 3:59am

Returning to an earlier point - because of the multilingual expectancy of our design approach I was able to offer our units in Castillian Spanish as a de facto standard, but then offer reconfiguration software for potential distributors in Catalan and Basque in-house - in my opinion its a must for developers operating int he European market.

Comment by Lyndon Owen on April 8, 2009 at 3:56am

Just back from a tour of the AAC market in Spain - most interesting. There is no doubt that Spain has the least developed market I have come across in Western Europe which makes for a very interesting structure. There is no pyramidical structure whatsoever and government involvement is minimal and variable from region to region. The positive aspect is the incredible level of transparency between companies, even to the extent of using each other as sub-distributors for each others products. The recession is biting hard in Spain though.

Comment by AbilityNet - David Banes on March 13, 2009 at 4:33am

That would be interesting - take care

Comment by Lyndon Owen on March 13, 2009 at 4:28am

I'm not going to make Paris (to prove the diversity point I'm in Norway, Sweden and Spain that week), but we have just signed up Proteor as our French distributor and I would expect them to be there. If Joel Pansard is present he would give you an interesting and informed opinion on AT take-up in the French market.

Comment by AbilityNet - David Banes on March 13, 2009 at 4:24am

I agree and one of the reasons why we find ourselves doing a significant amount of international work is that we proactively explore issues around language - we know from day 1 that it may be an issue. One o fthe things that interests me is that there is a desire to stimulate the AT market in europe - to do that we will need to see a greater commitment to multilingual versions from a wider range of manufacturers - perhaps one step would be to put manuals and trainign materials under a creative commons licence so that anyone could translate ?

David

Comment by Lyndon Owen on March 13, 2009 at 4:17am

One obvious issue in product development involving text in a European environment is the immediate need to provide a multilingual and special character approach. This mentality is second nature to us, especially here in Wales (unlike England, bilingual is the norm). Oddly, recent sales activity in the US has resulted in lots of feedback assuming an 'English only' device despite the huge Hispanic population, and the naturally cosmopolitan nature of the urban centres. I mention this as an interesting example of top down v bottom up design specification and the contrast between the two continents - comments?

Comment by AbilityNet - David Banes on March 13, 2009 at 4:10am

I guess I was uinterested to see what we in europe or with European experience see as different when seeing posts from others - one of the things that is obvious to us is the diversity of schemes within Europe - but atthe same time we have work afoot from the Commission to see greater harmonisation within Europe

Ive two European slots coming up one at the European Accessibility Forum in Paris which I think is 1 April and the other at the commission on March 25th - anyone likely to be there ?

Comment by Samuel Charles Sennott on March 12, 2009 at 8:01pm

Hi, I lived in Italy for a half a year and hope to do an AAC project there at some point. Plus I care a great deal for Europe and its people!

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