COMMUNICATION has become a lot easier for eight non-verbal Verney Road School students after a donation of iPads from non-profit organisation State Schools Relief.
The iPads, which are eight of 350 being donated to non-verbal school children across the state, will be used with communication apps designed to give a voice to those who struggle with communication.
The apps, which use a visual representation of language, allow students to quickly and easily express themselves by selecting images of what they want to communicate, which the iPad expresses audibly.
Verney Road School speech pathologist, Laura Coyne, said the new technology would be useful for the students beyond the classroom.
“When the students develop that connection and that knowledge that this is their new voice, I think they’ll be pretty stoked to use that voice output feature to speak without having to have someone relay that message for them,” she said.
The distribution of iPads is into its second year after 191 iPads were provided to students in need across 29 specialist schools in 2019. The 2021 program is nearly double that.
State Schools Relief chief executive officer, Sue Karziz, said the feedback from 2019 was that students were thrilled to be able to use the technology.
“Being able to communicate with their parents, their siblings, their friends, it’s life-changing for those children and young people,” she said.
“We had a letter sent in by a parent who said that she’d heard her son express himself audibly for the first time asking for orange juice using the app, and that was really touching. It’s amazing what a difference technology can make.”
Funding worth $150,000 for the iPads come from Bank First in conjunction with Gandel Philanthropy.
