Adaptions 4 Kidz

I put this post on Junior's regular blog and since it deals with an adaption of sorts I thought I would share it here. It was Junior's first real experience using his head switch with his ipad via the switch interface.


I hope everyone had a very nice Labor Day.
We relaxed here at home and Junior enjoyed playing on his computer and Ipad.

Playing baseball
My goofy kid scored a run in the second inning and then turned to his ipad and told me he won.
Right after Junior told he won the computer froze so we had to stop. I then pulled out the ipad and his switch interface. With it taking us forever to get it figured out and then Junior being ill he hadn't tried it out yet.
We started with an app called Tap Sequence. I had recorded one of Junior's transformer books on it and added pics. Poor Junior the pics are ones that were in the app so don't match the story. Junior was very excited to be able to turn his own pages while listening to the story. Look at that face, I think he was trying to figure out how those pics could possibly go with the story.
The little black thing on his tray is the wireless switch interface that connects his head switch to the ipad.


Before getting out of his stander we tried out the Sounding Board app with his switch. Sounding Board is a communication app that is switch accessible. It is not what he uses so I hadn't programmed it for him. We just used one of the pre programed boards. I showed him what he needed to do to make his choice and then pulled up a leisure board. I asked what he wanted to do when he gets out of his stander. The highlighted box moves to a new symbol every 3 seconds and he clicks the switch when it gets to what he wants. Junior quickly chose "I want to watch tv". Being his very first time using this program I wanted to be sure he really understood and hadn't just hit his switch and it happen to be on the tv. I asked him to please show me one more time what he wanted. He sat and patiently waited for it to get back to " I want to watch tv" and then quickly hit the switch again(there were 9 choices on the screen). He very clearly got it and was very proud of himself. It was so neat to be able to have that large number of choices on the screen at one time and not worry about whether I could see what he was looking at. I just waited to hear his "voice" giving me his choice.
I then pulled up the yes/no board and asked if he wanted to get down(not sure why they have a black box for yes). He told me yes, several times. I think he wanted to make sure I realized he did indeed "get it", smart guy.
Now if there were just more switch accessible apps. Hopefully soon, very soon. We are looking forward to his current communication app(the one he uses with eye gaze) being made switch accessible(it is in the works).

Tomorrow Junior has therapy in the morning then a visit to Shriners for a cast change. Busy day.

And of course we are to 5 days in our countdown to Junior turning 13.