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Yak-Yak can be used as an assistive aid by users with a language disability, such as for instance dyslexia, or aphasia. It can assist with writing, reading, and speaking.
Yak-Yak is used both by private owners and in institutions, for instance in special education in many schools.
A disabled user may not be able to re-establish his language entirely by himself. Also when using Yak-Yak, it requires help from the surroundings, especially from relatives.
If available, a specially trained consultant can analyze the user's abilities and needs, to see if the user may benefit from using the program.
The user may find the right words by means of the Wordfinder. The expressions he wants to use are recovered one-by-one, and inserted into his document. Eventually their meaning may be understood by others.
Some users with the severe language disability aphasia may be entirely incapable of expressing themselves in the ordinary language.
No other technology exists, which in any way approaches the efficiency of Yak-Yak in assisting such users. The Wordfinder has been especially developed, following newly discovered principles, in order to help these users in recovering their lost language.
If a user cannot read or recognize the words that the Wordfinder presents, he can choose to have them spoken by a synthetic voice. The writing process can rely on auditive, and native language abilities. This works well, even if the user cannot read.
A user who cannot speak may write in Yak-Yak instead. Then he gets it to read the text aloud, for instance over the phone.
Entire books can be read to you. Yak-Yak comes with tools to make any kind of text into an electronic book.
You can also enter all sorts of printed material by electronic scanning. A scanner will take a copy of a page from a book, and turn it into text which the computer can work with.
A user with a language disability can have basic items from his personal situation made into a Yak-Yak book. In this way the most critical words, names and expressions become available - once again - in the user's life, via the Wordfinder.
The same, of course, is true with respect to the words in his professional language.
A user with impaired vision can use Yak-Yak, because the interface can speak, and because the text can be displayed in a large size. Any assistive aid available for the Macintosh computer can be applied.
Aphasia implies that a person has partly or entirely lost the ability to express himself in the ordinary language, following disease or accident. Both speech and writing can be extremely difficult to understand, even for close relatives. There are many different forms.
This disability does not necessarily imply that the challenged person has lost other abilities. Also, it is not unusual with aphasia patients that basic language understanding and abilities remain intact, even if this is not apparent at once.
In dyslexia there is a particular difficulty with respect to the written language. Often persons challenged by dyslexia have severe problems with spelling, even words that they know perfectly well, and use freely in speech.
Experience shows that the Wordfinder can find the right forms of practically any word a dyslexic user can be in doubt of.
