So a few months ago now, I took on the hardest challenge in the fan-made mod, Dragon Ball Z, Budokai Tenka Ichi 4. And it just so happens, the hardest mission in the game is fighting the developers themselves. That's right, they put themselves in the game through their OCs and modded it to make them each extremely broken. I couldn't do it alone, but now I have my friend RimeStyle here to help me Rime. We're gonna take turns doing this. Are you feeling confident at all? Well, I won in this. I don't know about you, but I mean... Are you... you've beaten this before? Yeah, I mean... Bro, as far as I've ever gotten was the third character in the lead. I used to have a list of all their jobs and what they did. You didn't even see the Power Ranger? No, I didn't even get to the Red Power Ranger. Okay, so here's the thing, here's the thing. The Vegeta at the end, one-shots you with every attack as a heads-up. Ah, dude, that is so awesome because the guy in the middle did an ultimate on me and broke my game. Hold on, where is... actually, I remember that. Oh, we don't have... okay, you know what? I'm closing my eyes and you say, stop, you say, stop. Uh, stop. Okay, and it was... one more time. Oh, stop. Okay, I'm mashing. I don't know who I got. Bro, I know who you got. And that... I'm sorry, man. I'm going to win. You don't think I'm going to win? I know. You're not going to win. I've played against these devs. I know, and I've won. I watched this. Bro, I don't know how you won. Okay, we must have different experiences. Who do I? Who do I have? Never mind. You know now? Never mind. Well, I'm sure they can at least beat Frieza. So this one is a little easy to miss. This is just Mecha-Friza with the Scouter on. I forget who does this exactly. I should probably pull it up. Oh, how did you miss? Oh my God, you already missed, man. You have to do better. Can I just wring them out? No. No. Good dodge. Good dodge. I'm focusing. I'm bricked up. I'm bricked up. I'm bricked up, Dotto. I'm bricked up. Fight back. Fight back. That's it. That's all you can do. That's all you can do. I'm going to freeze them. What are you doing, bro? Don't dash up on me. Wait, I have the tech. No, no, I got the tech. What's the tech? Do you have super explosive wave? Yes, but I want to need it. Oh my God. I want to need it because I'm going to do ice cannon. I'm cold, bro. Bro, you're cold? That did no damage, but you got lost. I was going to say, why is he? He's just taking in scenery. But why'd you move? Well, he's going to move again. So he, okay. He's looking at it. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I did the wrong attack. Bro, this is embarrassing. Fight it. Oh, he wasn't even seeing you when he dodged your techniques. I like how he, I know. He had his eyes closed and he was dodging your beams. I know what to do. I know what to do. Please tell me. Wow. Nice fan. Oh, no. The miracle of you. I'm getting jumped. Who is that? I forgot about this. I forgot he has his own fan made friend come in. Luckily, this won't do any damage. He only did 900. He only did 900. That's, that's good. Wait, no, that's my damage. Never mind. Oh, wait, no, that is his damage. 20K is a lot though. Freeze. You're in arrest. All right. This is getting, this is getting worse, man. You beat this? Yes, I beat this. You need to beat it with ice shenron, bro. Why are you slowly walking up? There you are. I like this strat. I'm just going to pull up bottom. I like this strat. Let's make it to Vegeta. Let's at least make it to Vegeta. Pull up my whole load on him. What are these? Nah, I'm not. He called his boys out to fight you with him though. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. See, we're good. We're good. He's laid out. Bro was laid out, but now his friends just pissed to you. Watch out. Oh, oh overhead. Low combos. Nice finish. No. Oh, no. Oh, no, bro. I can't dodge this. Hey, why are you yelling my ear? He's going back for more. It's fine, it's fine, it's fine. He's fine. Good reaction, good reaction.  The super explosive is a strat. He doesn't need a bar mat. He doesn't need a bar mat. But do it again. Oh, he almost had you. One more. Let's go, no block. Yeah. I'm feeling like you might make it to the third developer. Stop, oh, watch out. He's just, he's being very patient with you. And now he's running. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's scared. He's scared, look at him. Frozen in his boots. Why? Freeze. Why is he frozen? He's taunting. Oh, he couldn't even see you. It's because I blinded him with my ulti circle.  You're clever. Oh, he's, he canceled out, but I reached him. Yeah, he canceled out on him during your attack. I'm gonna give him a hand. Blind him, blind him. Are you need three bars for that? Blind him. Yeah, get back on the ground, bro. You're not winning this one. Finish sign. Finish sign. I think he's going to finish it. Why, the childish. He's going for his ultimate. No, he's not. Yes, he is. Max power.  Oh, it was just, damn. Stop, stop, back up, back up, back up. Oh my God. He was blinking through it all. He will not stop doing that one move. And now he's dead for it. Same. Also, look at this. Come on.  Why did he fall down like a dead fly? Oh God. Oh God. Oh, bro, die. Die. Just die, die, die, die. Good Lord.  All right, chrono. Me and you, bro. This is this is the last person I saw before my game ended before my game literally broke. I'm back. There we go. Put the hands on it. Are you dashing? Come here, bro. Yeah. No shot. One HP in a dream. One HP in a dream, Donald. I don't even know who.   What do you think you are, bro? I said I didn't even know he was dead until like until he really had no other choice. Donnie, bro, eyes, cubes. Hey, bro, I'm gonna get him. I'm gonna get your get back, bro. You let me random your character, bro. Here's the thing. I'm gonna close my eyes. You just pick me somebody you think I'll work with. Okay, okay, okay. My eyes are closed. I'm actually totally relaxed in my chair. I'm leaning back. Okay, okay. I got I know exactly. I know exactly what's for you. I know I can kick my feet up because I know you're giving me a good character too. Absolutely. So here's the thing. I practice. I got a coconut in my hand. When you see which character I gave you, there's gonna be way more pressure to win than you think. Yeah, I'm chilling, bro. Just you got to let me know when I open my eyes. Open your eyes. Open your eyes. Okay, we're in the game. Yeah, we're in the game. Let's go. Who am I looking at? Who am I looking at? Is Vegeta blue? Oh, I'm like, what? That Dragon Ball heroes, Vegeta blue? You really wanted me to win. Yeah. So you can't lose your phone and everything. I literally can't lose combos. Oh, it's already over. This is going to be embarrassing, bro. Not nice. See, you gave me a good character to get a mess up. But I'm not. I'm gonna look this. You him? I am. That should have comboed. All right. So immediately. Hey, that's fine. You know what to do. Spirit sword, Spirit Excalibur. Oh, they patched for this. No way. There you go. You cannot win me. There you go.   Bro, I thought I had him. I thought I had him until I didn't. I thought I had him until I didn't. I think you got this. Think a little team at home watching this video. Bro, you're going to have to swat it. Swat it away. I'm not, bro, I'm not cannon. Bro, you got to at least get past Frieza at least. Bro, I'm going to get fast Frieza. Don't worry about that. Cheating is okay. You can fire a billion swords if you have to. But then I have to charge it up, bro. And I know he's going to. Don't even try it. Frieza. Donald, please. My moves are working, man. I'm trying to die. Die. Please, for help. Donald. Donald, your help, man. All right. All right. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to get some ground between us. I'm going to. Swat it. Swat it. I can't swat anything. All right. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to be full power. Max power. Literally can't be stopped anymore. Oh, no. No. Life is impossible. No way. Bro, I should have spanned more. Are you good? Are you good? How am I supposed to be good when he's out there? Bro, I couldn't win that. But that was the. He got to. That was a secret weapon. All right. I'm closing my eyes. You can pick my character for me. All right. All right. Let me walk you in. Let me walk in. You know what, bro? I'm going to hook you up with something special. I can't believe. I told you cheating was okay.  Absolutely. You can push up. Push ups. I got you something special. If the geno blue couldn't do it, maybe his nemesis could, bro. Did you give me Broly? Because I'm bad with Broly. Oh, the beat up arms of Masu. Yeah, you're welcome. He's still talking. He bro is talking like an essay. Watch this. Watch this. Frame one, frame one, frame one. And that arm is huge. How would you go for a swing counter? I'm going to throw a whole lightning at him. Never mind. He's throwing all of a sudden. That's fine too. I guess. I'm going to charge my key. Go ahead. Do you think? He has key signals. Oh, he does charge pretty slow. I didn't even know. Oh, I didn't even use. I thought I was massive square because he was dodging me. Oh, my goodness. That's a lot of key. Good reflections though. Do you think he's bro? Don't go down to his level, bro. Find something cheap and use that. Oh, never mind. Oh, no. No, you can't. You can't go hand to hand with the developers. They are crazy.  Oh, big 8k. Can you dash? All right, blocking is fine. Oh, oh. Oh, damn. Yo, Frieza's about different right now. What is happening? I'm telling you, bro. He's cheating. He got mad. If you go bar for bar with Frieza, he's going to win. He got mad. No, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, that was good. Don't let him get to 100%.  Bro, I'm going to throw it. Bro, you have to beat at least Frieza. Let's go. Max power. Keep last something to hold them down. The vine wrath. This is a son, bro. Fire it back at him. There's no way. Oh, my God. It's a 4k. There's no way to 4k, bro. I didn't even hate the judgment. I'm going to judge him. All right. That's more than your ultimate. That's more than your ultimate. You're playing the game the right way now. This is the only way the devs can be beaten. You got to do what you got to do. Good. Good. I got lightning. Start panicking. Start panicking. I don't know. Are you fine? Are you sure about that? I know it's undodgeable. Lightning, lightning, lightning is fast. Hit him. Hit him. Hit him. Hit him. Hit him. Oh, my God. I can beat Frieza. I can beat Frieza. I can beat Frieza. Put my back on him. No. I'm going to judge you again. We're good. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. Yes. Easy. What do you mean you don't care? You got to take care of Vegeta, too. With raw hands. Raw hands, bro. And I'm going to judge him, too. Judge. You're getting judged, bro. Stop it. That was good. That was good. That was good almost a K. This is the only way to fight the dead. This is insane. Are you gonna get up again? Judge, bro Get in judge, bro. I'll do it again. Why is this the only way to fight the dead? I'll do it again. I'll do it again Who you where you going bro?  He's getting embarrassed. He can't find a way through the glass shards This is how you fight the dead. We can cheat.  You gotta find time to find that justice I'll show you justice bro. Go ahead. Push the button. You push the button. Oh, you shouldn't have done that. You shouldn't have done that Look, once you found once you find your move, you're a spit. Once you find your move and nobody can stop you Okay, you just do a little bunny hop. What's that? I'm gonna make it to the next guy. Power Ranger. Come on. Come on. Push the button. Push the button. Push the button. Oh, you push the button You push the button. Do it again. I'm ready. I got the key. I'll do it. I'll do it again I'll spam. Oh My god, he almost ended you. There you go.  Be careful. His ultimate someone that broke my game. I'm going to It did 4k damage again, watch out. Oh, that was close. That was close Watch out. That was close. That was close. Watch out. He's coming like a nice way to play. You don't have any more explosives Oh, I feel like we did it. We did our bits our shenanigans now is to pick our actual character Yeah, yeah, now we've now we pick now we pay what watch what happens. I'm actually tried All right, let me see who I want to work with here. Vegito honestly would have been my pick But I think I embarrassed myself so I don't want to do that again So I think and this might sound crazy to you, but I'm gonna go with a little character known as Maju okay Yep. Yep costume one. I want I want original now. Where are you going with this is the better question I'm going to the victory line. Okay, his maju has a little move I like to call the best spam move in the game better than spirit sword. Yes chocolate beam Okay, so I'll lock him in place. I lock him in place. I I do 9k 9k damage right away. That is what I do. What do I do? I get up? I walk over chocolate beam Dammit, oh damn it Did you not have a contingency play in case you did that I do I do and I And then it locks on and does like 2,000 damage All right, but what's important is not the amount of damage. It's the fact that I can do it for me Don't even try me beam back up You can't run for me. Oh, the thing is my chocolate box is crazy.  Well, actually these are these are great people because they're developers is amazing. Oh, yeah Thank you so much. I mean they did an amazing job. Oh my god. He hit me for half a health bar I'm gonna get right under him and I'm gonna shoot it right up. Oh smart Let's go. I missed it missed. Oh he dropped that down and took a 4k. It's like I hit him with half a chocolate beam I love how this game has attacks like lightning arrow, which does no damage. Yeah, no I just love that that's in the game just a pee-pee. Just when they're far away by the way You just yeah, just do this. Oh no Why did I hit you like an acne cartoon The better question is why are half my rule super just hit him People ask by the way I get it in case you could tell comments This isn't like the the 1v50. You don't get health back in between every single round. No, no, I wish I did Ultimate you or super you right away. No, he's not he always does. Oh, no Chocolate beam, yeah, I know you but I'll take it. Yeah Remember that doesn't Track you can use that to your advantage. Okay. Thank you for the I appreciate that tip So what I'm what I'm messing up on is hold on real quick Remember it goes forward you can dodge it easily I dodge and then I fire back and then I miss and then I Where's my chocolate beam you're at the bar for it. Do I really not I do what dude chocolate beam is it three years or four are you four because the blockable chocolate beam is back It's a little bit above three.  We went through it my antenna be Ah Are your turn bro? I doubt I want you close your eyes. Okay. My eyes are closed.  I don't want I want you to smell this character Matter of fact, I didn't listen to me. I want you to guess which character I'm going to play go. Yes, I see you on a goku black Would you pick? Oh, I probably should get my secret weapon This is my secret weapon. This character is fast here. It's main. Oh God you those this character is so fast and then it for 8k.  Oh, I thought it was gonna be dragon ball It's nice cap flip around my bro, but I have this character. I can't lose stop it It's looking pretty nice varnish though but are you sure are you sure you can handle this metal freezes going kind of crazy We're not gonna see the Red Ranger again.  Yes Part two look at that damage. Yeah this character snapped That is a lot and you're still in green. Oh, do it again. Do it again. Why not?  It doesn't even matter I'm gonna end it Watch this to win here. I think you do actually win this wow you did the other thing when you beat a dev at a clash Yeah, it wasn't even close now watch me how kind is Vegeta please do okay sit down Sit down bro.   This is a word. Don't worry. Don't worry. Don't worry. I'm a witness a witness Wow, you want it but but it's getting closer and closer trust us trust us trust us trust us all I need is one health bar Push the button that come here. Let's go. I'm a cat. Let's go. This is huge. Meow meow motherfucker. Bye. Bye The key is having fast key charge. Are you moving? You're moving again. We move into Vegeta. We move Vegeta.  You're still alive. You're still alive Why did one key blast one stray key blast that you like that hopefully they like and subscribe that would make the pain hurt a little less Yeah, we will but that that's on you guys. Yeah, all right so long now. Goodbye like subscribe. Goodbye


Scientists have been measuring carbon dioxide in the atmosphere systematically since 1958 during the international geophysical year. We know that the prime driver of global climate change is increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels and deforestation. How do we know that? It's not a theory, it's not a model, it's not a hypothesis, it's measurements. So there is a steady almost inexorable increase in carbon dioxide that has brought us up to where we are today, which is 400 parts per million. So what this tells us is that there's a very powerful urgency here, particularly in the light of the Paris Agreement, which said we should try to stay well below. This is a map that shows average global increase and what you see is the earth essentially turning red, the earth getting hot. The globe as a whole has increased about just under one degree C since pre-industrial levels and in the Arctic regions it's actually six degrees. And the Arctic is where the ice is obviously and if that ice sheet starts to melt, particularly the ice that's on the land, then that slides into the sea. You get not only the warming of the sea, which is a rather long process, but the sliding of the ice into the sea. If you remember Archimedes principle from your high school days, that is something that pushes up the sea level much more rapidly than simply the thermal expansion. As the earth warms, the oceans warm and they expand due to thermal expansion, that's basic physics, but in addition we also melt ice off the land masses and all of this contributes to sea level rise. We believe that seeing is believing and we find that when people see the impacts of climate change, see the drivers, it has a greater impact on them than if we just talk to them about the scientific theories. We know that the principle driver of greenhouse gases is energy use. About 60% of all greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are directly related to energy use. For most of the world that means oil, gas and coal. So this is a picture of the earth at night and what you're seeing here is not electricity, what you're seeing here is flaring of gas from oil wells. So all of these fires you see are methane being burnt off, not sold, not used, but being burnt, being wasted going directly to the atmosphere and contributing to global warming. We're in the middle of an incredibly rapid transformation of the world's population into cities. We're about 50% in the cities now of around 7 billion people, so roughly we're a little over 3.5 billion people in the cities. That's going to go up to 6.5 billion people in the cities, something like 70% of more than 9 billion in the middle of this century. That's a one-off event in human history. That growth of the cities locks in infrastructure. It settles whether those cities are congested and polluted and wasteful or productive, clean and attractive places to be with low emissions. Cities, especially well-designed cities, are more energy efficient than rural and suburban areas. And cities also sometimes have the political and social capacity to institute reforms and changes that can be hard to institute on a national level. So to the extent to which cities are planned intelligently, to the extent to which cities implement regulations, to the extent to cities foster cultures of efficiency, there are tremendous opportunities in the next 10 to 20 to 30 years to really reformulate the way we use energy, the way we travel, the way we move and really make a very, very big difference in this problem. It shows what the risks are, shows what the drivers are and also points to some of the things we can do. This is an illustration of solar photovoltaic installations in the United States and focusing here, particularly in the Greater Boston area. This is the year 2001, so it's only 14 years ago. And this is really important, and I think probably most people in this audience know this but it's worth underscoring. Change can happen really quickly when you have the right rules, regulations and incentives in place. And that happened in the state of Massachusetts a few years ago. And so now watch what happens to the Boston metropolitan area over the course of the next 14 years. And you can see this rapid transformation. Now let's go to California. And now it's 2000. We see a bit of PV capacity but still not too much. And then California passes AB 32, an emissions control law that had large incentives for renewable energy. I mean, look at this. The whole of California is being lit up by solar PV. And all of that happened in less than 15 years. Sometimes regulation can make a big difference to things happening quickly. Sometimes you want to use the taxes and the subsidies, sometimes the regulations. Policy matters, but credibility of policy also matters. Scientists have been communicating this evidence for a long, long time now. And I think all of us close this issue feel like the time has really come to stop talking about climate change and the evidence of climate change and to really be talking about the solutions. Because we're really at a moment in history when if we don't do that now, the opportunity to fix this problem will really disappear. We'll really slip from our grasp.


And I'm really grateful to have you all here. I am really grateful to have Marin to present with me. And we're going to talk about kids with complex communication needs and cortical cerebral visual impairment. What's the complexity? OK, so can you guys hear me OK? I didn't test my mic. I should have I had like 10 minutes. So I had the opportunity of taking a course that was on the subject of CVI. And the instructor of the course used this example to explain how somebody with CVI may not always understand what is being shown to them. So the story is that he showed his student a photograph of a man walking a goat on a leash, as you see here as the example. This isn't the actual photograph. It was an actual photograph. And he said to the student, tell me what you see. And the student said, I see a man walking a dog. And it started this man thinking, this teacher, thinking about, oh, my gosh, they're not always able to see what we see. And they're not always able to interpret, even though they're looking. And it appears that they're seeing. And so I was using this example with an SLP. And I was telling this story. And she said, well, that's a really funny story, because I would have thought that the student didn't have the word for goat. And so they substituted the word for dog. And I went, oh, OK. Which hat are you wearing? And which lens are you looking through? And so it's just such a great example of why we are here today. I can look through the list of participants. And I know that we're well-represented in vision and in AAC and SLP, because we're trying to sort this out. So the issue then, to follow up on that, Maren really becomes, vision our language? How can we separate it? We can't. It's definitely an infinite loop that language impacts vision. Vision impacts language. And we, as professionals, need to step out of our silos, open up our windows, get into each other's cars, and work together to tease this relation apart. And the way that this webinar came together today is that Maren and I have been attempting to do exactly that. I think I have now a TBI who's also a budding AAC expert, which is fantastic. I am not a budding vision expert, but maybe someday we'll be able to join that crew. So this is the issue. How can we separate it? We can't. So who are we talking about? Today we're talking about kids with complex communication needs, and we're going to explain to those maybe on the vision end who that is, and kids with visual and cortical impairments. And as Maren and I were reading the chapter by Sarah Blackstone and Christine Roman, they say, and we clearly understand that the ideologies associated with cortical visual impairment and complex communication needs are often the same. So Maren, I know you have some numbers about. Well, it's not from that book. But the number can be as high as 80% in other Gordon Dutton has. I don't think it's a moving target number, but it's been quoted as high as 80%. And so he's saying what I have it here. In this textbook, The Root Lidge Handbook, he says we should rule it in. We should assume that vision loss is or vision perceptual challenges are there rather than that they're not there, especially if the brain's impacted in any way. And I know in my experience, and I as one of my lovely young AAC people told me was the dinosaur of AAC, my experience is we used to just know that there was something wrong, but we didn't have a first clue of what it was. I think we call them CPIs or something. So it really is any time there is some kind of miss wiring of the brain, Dutton's and others say let's rule it in. Let's not assume that they can see the way we think they're seeing. So today, here, we're talking about kids with complex, as I said, kids with CVI and kids with CCN. And we're trying to hit the kids in the middle of these two, so this Venn diagram in the middle, I couldn't find one that probably overlaps as much as it needs to. Yes, there are kids with complex communication needs that may have perfectly intact vision and can carry on in our world that is primarily visual. And there are kids with CVI who are talkers and don't need AAC, but we're finding out more and more that the overlap is significant. So, Karen. OK, so the kids that we're talking about with CVI, I insisted that we rule in vision needs as a carryover, because really and truly, that's how we're trained. So as a teacher that visually impaired at CVI, we've been well-trained to work with kids with ocular visual impairment. Instead, as we now know and as we're discovering once you graduate, most of the kids, 50% or more, up to 70% of your case load is going to be kids with brain-based visual impairment. And then I write in there sometimes in addition to an ocular visual impairment. So what do you do when there's both? How do you sort that out? Yes, Kathy. What's an ocular vision impairment? So ocular meeting eyes, eye-based visual impairment versus brain-based visual impairment.  So you need both in order for the message to get through to download the actual data that's there. You need both to be in perfect working order. So today in North America, we are calling that brain-based visual impairment. We typically call it cortical visual impairment or CVI for short. So, sorry, there is a question from the chat about the statistic of the 80%. So 80% of the CCN population have CVI. They wanted more clarification on the statistic. Fair enough. I think really what that is is 80% of kids that have some kind of impact on their brain, some kind of brain, so not, that's not 80% of kids with complex communication needs. No, that's it. I think things that I've read would suggest somewhere between 37 and 50%, that would be out of the article from Erickson and Geist 2017, but I think the 80% that Marin is talking about is kids that have some kind of challenge that impacts the development of their brain. So it could be cerebral palsy, it could be epilepsy, it could be a multitude of things that impact the developing brain. We need to, as he puts it in, Marin says, rule in the possibility of cortical visual impairment that they won't be processing, that the perception will be off, right? So it's not that, your great question, it's not that 80% of kids with complex communication needs have cortical visual impairment, although gosh, I don't think we know to tell you the honest truth. And that's why the number is a moving target. And so I think 80% is one of the numbers that I've seen and my experience tells me that that's probably a fairly accurate number because as soon as there's a neurological impact of any kind, the visual system is diffusely spread throughout the brain. So even if it's something that impacts attention, visual attention is needed in order to make the whole thing, like everything needs to go perfectly well. This is when I'm really starting to wrap my brain around and if it doesn't, then we should look at visual perception and processing and assume that it's probably not gone well until we can rule it out, right? And that's why we need to work together is to try and figure that out. That's what I would say, good question about that. Indeed. So the next slide I put up kind of talks about NVI, Neurological Visual Impairment, we just used that word brain-based versus CVI, Cortical Visual Impairment, why make the distinction? I think we're really trying, in the vision world, we're really trying to wrap our brains around those two terms, when to use them, why to use them, why are they interchangeable? Christine Roman, the textbook that's more red and orange in color, she would say they're not interchangeable terms and I would agree with her. She herself in this textbook says that CVI, as she defines it with the CVI range, which we'll get into a little further in the talk, is a subset of Neurological Visual Impairment of this broader cerebral brain-based visual impairment. So we're kind of talking about all these kids generally today, although we are gonna use the CVI range to talk more specifically because it really is the best educational assessment tool we have to date right now that we're able to use. So that's why just to kind of hopefully clear up some of the terms around this topic. So a little bit about ocular visual impairment versus cortical visual impairment. So in ocular visual impairment, as we said, the visual impairment is due to a disease or trauma in the eye. It's easier to diagnose. Ophthalmologists have an amazing handle on this. It's easier to assess. We use the low vision would be 20 over 70. That's an acuity number. 20 over 20 would be typical vision. So 20 over 70, when you see these numbers, it means that somebody that can see at 70 feet really clearly that same person with 20 over 70 would need to be at 20 feet to see with the same acuity. Yes? And that is a vision that has been corrected. Yes, best correction. So glasses on everything that we can do to make the person be able to see that so as good as it's going to get. And the reason I'm giving you these numbers is because still to date, these are numbers that in some places are numbers that are required to activate service. So if they don't have low vision of 20 over 70 there are significant field loss. So down to 10% tunnel vision of their visual field, they don't qualify for vision services according to certain, and that's happening in Alberta. There's certain school divisions that will say no, don't qualify. But if we flip it over to brain-based visual impairment, some of these kids have 2020 acuity. So I'm sharing these acuity numbers with you to say, is there a case for ruling these kids in and having a TVI involved? I'm saying there is, we need to work. If you're in a region where that's not a possibility, we need to, we should talk about how we can try and explain the situation to the people that are making those decisions. Legal blindness, as I was explaining the 20 over 70, legal blindness is even more so. So what somebody at 200 feet can see with good resolution and clarity, that person would need to be at 20 feet. Sometimes these people are considered blind. They may be using Braille for literacy. Sometimes they're using both. That's a dual media user print and Braille. Often these kids are single sensory impairment, but not always. More frequently than not. So this is kind of who we were really well trained to work with and teach and support. Flip it over to the other side, ocular impairment on the left, CVI on the right. Now we're talking about the visual impairments happen in the brain. It's often undiagnosed or it's diagnosed very late. It often accompanies other physical cognitive challenges, motor challenges, communication challenges, and it can be quite difficult to accurately assess. So really different pictures in terms of trying to understand what the vision person's role is and what they're trying to navigate. So again, I say students often have both. So the eyes are damaged in some way or they're not lined up or something's going on with the eyes, so the picture coming in is fuzzy and then the brain's trying to interpret it, so that makes it additionally challenging. CVI, this is important statistics. CVI is now the leading cause of visual impairment in the developed world. So as we've seen in the last 15, 20 years, the ocular visual impairments, eye-based visual impairments have gone down, down, down because medical science has done such a great job of improving our access to technology and improving our access to surgeries, these kinds of things. We're doing a great job of treating preventable blindness and on the flip side of things, medical science has made it such that babies who are born extremely preterm, babies who have massive brain injuries, complex disabilities, these kinds of things, their survivor rate is going up, up, up. So we're kind of seeing this huge shift in the population of kids that we are serving. Dutton classifies, oh, this isn't, this isn't a Dutton one, but the reasons are here on the screen about what's happening with these kids where there's all these increases of complexity. That's, and you guys are seeing that in the schools, where all of us, teachers, all these kids are showing up and they're a lot more complex than they ever were before. Part of that is that those kids weren't in the schools before, if I'm true. So now we're gonna talk a little bit about for probably most of the folks who've been on the CCN PLC have heard this before, but we're gonna do a little review of who our kids with complex communication needs. They are the kids that need assistive technologies and augmented and alternative communication of some ilk to support their communication and language development, the definition that we have in Alberta that really honestly I pulled from an article from Australia because I think it made the most sense. They're unable to communicate effectively using speech alone.  They and their communication partners and this is gonna be hit on over and over. This is not something that just is the issue with the child. The communication partners are in huge, have to be in sync and have to have a huge role in supporting kids with complex communication needs. And then when you think about on top of it, if they have vision issues, there's another layer of complexity for the communication partners. So everyone benefits, everyone needs to use and benefits from an augmented and alternative communication. I'm gonna get into what that is in a second. I've put here, hearing limitation is not an, I didn't put, it's in the article. Hearing limitation is not the primary cause of complex communication needs. And I, for those of you who heard this before, I apologize, but one of the things that happened when we first started to ask across Alberta who how many kids with complex communication needs do you have, people would report on kids who are deaf and hard of hearing. And certainly they have different needs for communication language, but they're not complex in that mostly they need sign language. So our kids have another level of complexity. This is one of my favorite authors, Teresa Iacono, who talks about the fact that as a complexity increases, so does the complexity of communication and the complexity in finding that alternative system. People with disabilities really have to rely on the skills of others. And I think that's part of the big message that we have for you today, is that the skills need to be broader than just an SLP, broader than SLPs and OTs that we need to bring lots of other people in the conversation as, and that's Teresa Iacono says, the thing about people with disabilities is their challenges come, tend to come in multiples. So given that a little quick overview of what is AAC, I took this from the ISAC website. So this is a little shout out to ISAC and ISAC Canada. And if those of you who are on this webinar haven't joined ISAC Canada, you should because there's lots of great support and information there. So really what alternative AAC is about the multiple ways that communication can happen. It can be speech, it can be text, ingest your special expression sign. We all use multiple forms of communication and I think that's really important is this is not just this unique thing that happens for those kids with disabilities. We all do it as I'm doing it right now, showing you in a different way. But certainly for some of our kids natural speech and the natural modes are not sufficient to meet their requirements. We need to make sure that our goal with AAC is to make sure that a person is understood, their autonomous intent is understood and the form is less important. It doesn't matter how it happens as long as it can happen. So AAC can be non-aided, which means you use the speech that your body has. So it can be the speech that you have, manual sign. Just happy talking. Hang on, I'm gonna try and whoever just came in, if you can mute yourself, please then I can continue to talk. Thank you, because you're kind of loud. All right, there. And then aided communication, which is probably the most important or what we're gonna mostly talk about today, although there is really an important role for potential role for non-aided communication as well. All right guys, who are these people? I'm gonna mute you. Irene. Okay, are you muted? No, not muted yet. All right, this is just another way to say what I just said. I'm gonna move forward on this. So why do we need to think about augmented of an alternative communication? Communication happens across our lives in every aspect of our life. In home, in school, I know many of us are focused on what happens in school, but there's lots of environments throughout everyone's life that we need to be thinking about this. For people with disabilities, including the kids that we're talking about today, maybe most specifically, the consequences of not being able to speak or be understood are far reaching and often serious. My own research has, sadly, I guess unearthed, instances where students, people, children, have been in the situation of being, I will say abused, not physically or sexually, but emotionally, and can you imagine, I always wanna say this to people, can you imagine being a mom and sending your child to be somewhere all day long where they can't tell you what happened to them that day? So these needs are urgent, and the more complex it is, perhaps the more urgent it is because we need to think about how they can communicate in all these alternative ways. AAC, for me, this is the kicker, is a developmental pathway to communication and language development. Language is the foundation of learning. We need to have kids that have receptive language and ways to help them understand the world so they need symbolic representation to understand, to say what's gonna happen to me next, to give me meanings to help me learn, they need to be able to express, not only their choices and direct others, but as their thoughts and feelings and emotions, and ask and answer questions, particularly ask. We take so for granted the ability of our young kids in school to ask questions. When we have these kids with this complexity, how can we support them to have all of these functions of language? It's really critical. And our challenge for even for kids who don't have CCN and CVI, expressive communication abilities are alarmingly small, and I would say inadequate. So it's a big issue in the world of CCN generally. And then when we think about CVI on top of it, it becomes even more complex. Language doesn't grow out of silence. Kids need to speak, which means for all of our kids, we need a robust vocabulary. One of the things that I think happens often, or I've seen often happen for kids that have suspected lack of intellectual ability, challenges with vision as well as with communication, is they get this very small number of symbols or number of language set that they can get access to to use and even get access to to model. I've seen lots of situations where people say, well, let's just start with poor symbols because that's really all they can handle. And I have to use the example of my grandson because he's little. If Logan, when he was not being able to talk with me with very many words, if I said, well, he can only use very simple words. So I probably shouldn't speak to him with more than about eight because he's not really communicating yet. What words would I pick? And if I pick such a small array of words, how would that potentially impact his development in all of these areas? So the AC field generally is saying, we need to be thinking about giving kids access to robust language systems. Kater Hernd says a hundred. I think that's small, actually. The other thing about kids with CVI, kids with, particularly about CVI who have AC, is they, even if we gave them these large systems, how can they actually explore them and how can they learn that vocabulary that's there? So we need to be intentional about not only just providing them with systems that are more robust, but we need to be actually attentive, excuse me, to how we can provide meaningful access to those. The other thing that's really a challenge for our kids with vision is this whole notion of joint attention. And anyone who's heard me talk about AC and language development before knows that I talk about the privilege of the point. Thomas Salo, who is a linguist who I will talk about a little bit later, talks about this ability of the human being to point so that we can get joint attention as being foundational to the whole idea of getting language. So for our kids with CCN plus CVI, if their vision isn't working and they can't follow that point or don't even notice that we're pointing it all, they're hugely at risk of developing language receptively and expressively. So I'm gonna just go through a couple of myths before we get to how are we gonna actually unpack this? And I know I'm going really fast because we have lots to say. So these are some myths and misconceptions that are common, I think, in our world or things that I often hear and things that have actually come up in other talks that I've heard, which is that we need to start with concrete, things before we get to abstract language, that there's a symbol hierarchy, that the high contrast symbols that you might see on Boardmaker and other places are the CVI symbols, and then the big myth that we'll hit at the end, which is one size kind of fits no one. So this idea that we should start with real objects, then go to photographs, then introduce a symbol. And I think kind of, unfortunately, it came from Matt, Tijan's work, and Matt was talking about developing vision, not about developing language. And so if we think about this, we need to, well, maybe I should say this, yeah, we'll do it this way. We need to think about this, we need to think about the fact that language is de facto symbolic and abstract. We can't have language unless we can have a symbolic representation of a thing. So the word chair has nothing to do with chairness, it's just the word chair. And when we're talking with kids and helping them learn about their vision to say that this is a chair and this is a chair and this is a picture of a chair and this is, we have that symbolic representation. The challenge for our kids is that they won't have the, potentially won't have the ability to give you that chair word back, but maybe I'll put it this way. My point is, is that if we think about the symbol hierarchy, we are reducing language to something that is very concrete and very specific. And if we think about languages, language can't be specific. I'll give you maybe a better example than what I put here. There was a child who I was, well, I was consulting to the team and he had to pick a photograph because they said, no, no, no, he's not ready for symbols. He needs the actual photograph. So he had a photograph of the gym in his school that he recognized as meaning that he was going to go to the gym. So that's good, okay. So when he moved to another school, suddenly that photograph didn't work for him because it meant the gym at the other school. It was specific to that gym because photographs and objects tend to be specific. Language can't be specific. So this symbol hierarchy of teaching, here's this chair and then here's a little representation of a chair and then here's a symbol of chair. Number one, I would argue is not really teaching anything about, well, maybe it's teaching something about chairness, but number two, for our kids with complex communication needs and CBI and often intellectual disabilities, they don't have time to learn the word chair and multiple iterations. They don't, we can teach them the vision of this, but to learn about the word, why would we teach the word over and over in multiple ways? We need to teach them the abstraction, the symbol for that. Here's another example for me that really I struggle with and I did this, did this, did this. So what about eat? I used to give kids a spoon to represent the word eat. Okay, so if I give the kid a spoon to represent the word eat, what am I gonna say when I have a spoon? This is a spoon, this isn't eat, this is a spoon. So the minute that we try to make something too concrete, we've missed in my people not so humble opinion, we've missed idea of what language is all about and then we've locked kids into trying, okay, well, if this is to eat here, then what is spoonness? So anyway, okay, enough, off the soapbox. Research is showing that one of the biggest challenges and this is Karen Erickson, many of you have heard her is the idea that we have to start with real concrete reference for kids with significant disabilities and CVI and CCN. The research is not showing that. The research says that we can start with things that are much more abstract and those things that are much more abstract are also harder to put into some kind of iconic symbol, I suppose. The other research that is really important that's just out is that kids with, now this is not about kids with CVI, this is about kids with intellectual disabilities, but it does have impact, I believe, on what we're doing with our kids with complex communication needs and cortical visual impairments, is that iconicity, that means how well the symbol represents the thing that we're talking about really is not that important of a factor. So for example, these are symbols here, they're pre-max symbols. They have, I would be surprised if any of you could tell me what symbols those represent, but they, and maybe I'll go to this, kids need to learn what symbols mean, whether they're oral symbols, like the word chair or eat, whether they're graphic symbols, we need to, whether they're tactile symbols, we need to teach those symbols. And again, I would argue to make them too specific is going to get in the way, potentially, of kids learning language. So kids learning language by actively investigating, they need guidance from a language environment that's going to support them, and that's the truth for all kids, including kids with CCN and CVI. They need to be interacting and observing adults and other people who are using their systems, and we'll talk more about that as we get into some ideas of what might work. And then this last thing, that high contrast symbols are for kids with CVI, maybe, and Maren, do you wanna talk about your kiddo with the black and white symbols? Sure, yeah, so one of the characteristics on the CVI range is color, and for a lot of kids who fit the subset of that characteristic, color seems to help the child see. And so we use high contrast colors and symbols and these kinds of things, but it is possible and it has happened in my practice, for sure, that there are students out there who don't perceive color at all, and they perceive only in black and white, and therefore to say high contrast symbols for somebody with CVI in this child has even a diagnosis of CVI, doesn't make sense. So again, we can't say high contrast, oh yeah, CVI, here's the symbols for CVI, but that's not a thing. It should be based on what the child is showing us, what the child is telling us, rather than just assuming. So I'm gonna pass it over to Marin in a second, but I think the other point is really important that kids not only need language they can understand, so a lot of our kids we sort of assume that they're gonna understand our oral language and most of them probably will, but they also need to have language that they can use, which is something I talked about a little bit earlier. This is Michael Tomsello, I said, talked about him earlier that he's one of the more recent thinkers in the world of psycholinguistics and language and psychology, and he's saying in order to really learn language, you have to use it, so we need to give access to all of our kids, including kids with complex communication needs and CVI, not only input, but other ability to output meaningfully. Kids with complex communication needs, again to follow that up, require consistent and predictable opportunities to experience and manipulate language, not just passive recipients of language, and it needs to be built on, but not dependent on engaging vision, so we need to be thinking about vision as part of the process, but it's not the only way that kids are going to be able to access language, even though in the world of AAC, many of our practices tend to privilege visual representation of language. We need to be thinking about lots of ways when vision isn't working the way it should to be continued. Okay, so where do we start? So I just wanted to kind of, before I even start into this piece about vision and gathering information and these kinds of things, I wanted to kind of just say why the heck I got dragged down this back alley of AAC anyway. Kathy partially started dragging me down it, but then I realized that was supposed to be in the alley. And then here's how that happened, is three, four years ago I had the opportunity and many of you have had the opportunity to hear Linda Burkhart speak, and she had all these videos of these kids and using communication systems that were somewhat visual in nature, but supported with auditory and these kinds of things, and I just feel like she stood up and called me out and said, those are your kids too, you better get with the program. So that was kind of the start of my journey into this world of AAC and me trying to really understand how it all fits together, how does language develop and what does vision have to do with that and what about the motor skills? And I'm still, Kathy said, I'm still trying to figure this out. I'm gonna begin to remind about this every single day, right before we got on the call with you guys I was calling Kathy saying, okay, what do I do now? What do I do now? Because these kids baffle me on a daily basis. So from my perspective as a vision person, I am gonna start through that lens because that's the hat that I wear, that's my lens. And so I start by being a keen observer and I start gathering information. I try to do a really thorough review of medical information because the etiology with lots of these kids matters. Sometimes I'm on the phone with a parent. Sometimes if it's really mild, like something's going on, but I don't know what and there's nothing in the file, I'll get on the call with the parent and 45 minutes into the conversation, the parent will finally say, oh yeah, there was that one time that they stopped breathing and they had this hypoxic incident for X amount of minutes. Okay, can that impact vision? Yes, that can impact vision. And then it almost affirms why I'm seeing what I'm seeing. So I feel like that's a really important place to start. Almost giving you permission to be on the team and continue exploring that journey. So that part matters. The collaboration with family, team members, gathering information via interview, observation, direct assessment, all of that stuff is really, really important because functional vision assessment, I wrote potentially, sometimes the tools that we have, if the child doesn't have oral language, we don't know. Like I have my little eye chart, but if they can't tell me what they see, I don't know. So I'm gonna have to turn into this. It's kind of like you turn into the Sherlock Holmes role instead of a lot of direct assessment. It's a lot of this informal, indirect kind of assessment, which is uncomfortable because that really wasn't how we were trained. So I wrote down, we should be thinking about learning media or sensory assessment. That's me trying to figure out what's the best way to get information into this child and what's gonna be the best way for them to then express that information. CVI range assessment, that's gonna be the next thing we talk about because like I said, it is the best educational assessment tool we have on access to right now. And what's the complexity framework? We've referenced his name a few times, that's Matt Tegen's work. If you wanna know more about that, you can access a whole chapter on that in the advanced principles book that Christine wrote. And really what Matt does so well in that assessment is he really guides you through thinking about the environments and thinking about the tasks and thinking about the threshold abilities of the child so that you're trying to balance the school day in terms of the complexity of the demands of the environment and the tasks. So it's a great, great, great chapter if you're interested in knowing more about that. So the CVI range, I need Banna. I don't have, I'm not running in the show. Maybe I am in the show. No, no, I'm not. Okay, so the CVI range is a tool developed by Dr. Christine Roman Lanzi. She was just here, she's been in Alberta a few times. She's written three textbooks now on the subject. So she truly is the North American expert on the topic. She's assessed thousands of kids at this point and her work was actually based on the work of Dr. James Jan as a Canadian. And so this is going back into the late 80s, early 90s where they were starting to look at, you know, a lot of these kids have these 10 characteristics that they all kind of seem to present with. So she took those 10 characteristics and she put them on into an assessment tool and she came up with a range. And so I like to use this tool because it helps give us a starting point that's pretty specific around these characteristics and then it helps us map out progress on the range. So one of the things I haven't said yet is one of the neatest things about CVI and one of the, I think probably the reason I'm so attracted to it in the first place is because if we can target and make target scales and make the appropriate accommodations, we should see progress. We should expect to see progress in the vision abilities of these students and often that is the case. You know, I've met a kindergarten student and assessed them on the range at a five, so about halfway and journeyed with them for many years and gotten them up to like an eight or a nine on the range. So we see progress with these students. They can learn to use their vision. That's pretty magical. So that range runs from one to 10 or zero to 10. Very few people are zero. That would mean not responding visually to anything at all ever. 10 being fully resolved, typical vision. So really we don't use either one of those numbers, but between one and nine something. Earlier in the range, the lower the number is the more challenges the student has with their vision. So in phase one, that would be a zero to three on the range. That means the student is essentially learning to see, learning to look, learning to access their vision. Phase two, I think I do get into the actual phases, but there's the, well, I'll say more about the phases in a minute. Go to the characteristics, Kathy. These are the 10 characteristics that in which it was based. Color preference, so we just talked about that with those CVI symbols. For some kids, but not all. Sometimes highly saturated colors or objects will help the student orient towards a visual stimulus. Movement can be another thing that helps students see. So it can be movement that's happening within, maybe it's just you're moving the object, object getting them to look. If they're in a wheelchair, sometimes their heads go up when they're moving in their wheelchair. Some kids are, if they're ambulatory, they're runners down the hallway and they seem to run everywhere they go and often they're more visually alert when they're doing that. Latency describes the time delay between when you present an object and the time they take to look. By the way, one of the reasons why I'm sharing these characteristics with you, because I'm well aware that there's SLPs on here who are working with kids who don't have a vision consultant on the team.  So I'm saying it because I want you to know a little bit about this so you know when to refer. So latency is that delay. So you present the object or you show them something and they don't look right away. There's a delay. Visual field preferences, that seems to be, they're not always able to access information in the full scale of visual field as you and I would. So sometimes there's a preferred field. Sometimes they don't have access to lower fields. It can look different. Need for light. So sometimes they are light gazing. So staring up at the lights or fixated on fans or like things overhead, non-purposeful gaze is another thing that you might see. So their eyes just kind of staring off into space. Something to look for. Difficulty with distance viewing. Usually how this progresses is lower on the range. They need things in really close range. And as their vision improves, you can move things farther and farther away from them and they will respond. Atypical visual reflexes, that's something that we don't, there's nothing to fix about that or no strategies, but you can check by tapping the student on their nose and they should blink or move their hands towards their face and they will blink also. So that's something to look for or to check. Difficulty with visual novelty, that refers to the fact that the student needs to see something more than once before they can hook into it. So they're more likely to respond to things that are familiar to them and to things that are brand new. This sometimes comes across as they don't like anything. So that student I just referred to who I was a five one amendment in kindergarten, one of the first conversations that we had was, I said, what is he like? And they said, he doesn't like anything. He just throws it over his shoulder. I said, well, so what do you do? And they said, well, we just keep trying new things. I said, well, what if we just stop trying new things and just picked a bin and continued to try with those objects and sure enough, eventually 50, 60 times later, he kind of looked at it for the first time. So that's what that could look like. Absence of visually guided reach, this has to do with the vision system and the motor system, having trouble working together in an integrated way.  And as they progress in the range, those two things become more and more integrated. And then the last one is difficulties with visual complexity. So there's four ways that that could show up. It could be complexity of the array. So that's, you know, I'm looking at my office here. There's lots of stuff on the bulletin board. That's a lot of complexity to take in. Complexity of object would be the thing, the object against whatever background would be the array, but the object itself, complexity, the faces are something that we look at. So their ability to make eye to eye contact and recognize faces and then the sensory environment. So that has to do with all of the sensory information around them. Those are the 10 characteristics. And then as I was saying about the phases on the next screen, that's great. So if you do the CVI range assessment and the number comes out as between a zero and a three, we would say they're in phase one. And what we're doing there is we're building visual behavior. So students are working on establishing consistent visual response. And they're really only able to use their vision well in a very controlled situation. And it's rare even to see a student in phase one look directly at a target. So it's more peripheral vision. So the objects are there and you can tell that the students aware that the object is there, but there's not necessarily this really good eye to object contact. And then Kathy, the AAC implications, I'll leave that one to you. Or do you want me to do it? Are you muted? She's muted. I'll do it. So the AAC implications of that are that we will probably need to rely on alternative sensory information, mostly that will be, I would suggest, at this paint point auditory. So unless, and we're going to get to this, again, the challenges are multiple. And I'm sorry, we're going a little bit in sequence, but we also need to know about what these kids hear. But for many of our kids in this group, they are going to be able to process auditory information better than visual information. So we need to be thinking about auditory, which might be auditory scanning. If we get to the end of the talk, I'll show you some examples of that, that they're going to need their language presented to them in an auditory fashion, not just a visual fashion, sometimes auditory and factual together. Although we've got very limited opportunities really for good, tactical information for the multitude of things that we talk about. Backlighting, there's a lot of support for the idea that technology can help these kids to see. So providing AAC supports on an iPad or on a computer, which it has backlighting, with auditory support can be really helpful. And we also need to make sure that we don't, again, don't let their visual abilities get in the way of their exposure to language. And we're not even talking about literacy, do you think that's not the whole talk, but language is the foundation of literacy. So we need to make sure that they get to use their vision, but we need to make sure that they're learning language and getting access to language as they do it. And again, I'm just going to highlight that it's probably auditory with perhaps some factual. Karen? Yeah, definitely. So phase two, if the score comes out between a three plus and a seven, we would say the student is in phase two on the range and phase two, you're seeing more eye-to-object contact. Vision is becoming more predictable, more reliable. According to Dr. Roman's range, this is when it would be more appropriate to introduce 2D images with backlighting if you're around a five on the range. Again, it depends on the kid. Sometimes we would be, Linda Burkhart said this, I think it's brilliant. We've used some pod books with kids that are one symbol per page. I've used them with kids in phase one. You're providing the one symbol per page, not backlight just on a paper copy to a student in phase one with the auditory scanning component. And she said, it's like it gives them the knowledge or the cue that we're using. We're going to use this thing now. We're going to tuck pod.  Now we're talking pod. So I think that's, there's no harm in definitely pairing with that symbol, especially in those earlier numbers. So don't be afraid of that, but know that if you're doing that exclusively and thinking vision is it, that's probably not a good idea. So that's just my two cents on that. Well, and that sort of goes, they may or may not be able to discriminate those two D symbols or pictures. So we need to be thinking about making sure they have auditory support and the complexity of the way. And again, I'm going to give some examples. I'm a little afraid that we're going to run out of time that the Marin's example is really good that Linda's, and this sadly, this is not commercially available yet, but a lot of the alternative access pod systems have the complexity of the array reduced, but still we have a deep and meaningful access to language. So we need to make sure that we have auditory and tactual to some degree and maybe starting to introduce the possibility that they can use whatever vision they have to start to orient to the fact that, okay, now I'm expected to listen to the auditory scan or now I'm expected to give some kind of response when they're giving me these choices to listen or this list to listen to. In phase three, so seven plus, now the student is developing visual curiosity. So it used to be such that that once a student was in phase three, they were kind of good to go. They're using their vision, showing visual curiosity, my job here is done. Matt Tegen's work that we've been referencing kind of brought to the forefront that just because they're looking at something doesn't mean they're accurately interpreting, that's the man in the goat. It turns out that the biggest functional implication of students in phase three is complexity. So the example, I just saw a little guy today, he's three years old and he's doing lots of vision stuff. I showed him, he's definitely in phase three. He looked, he touched the iPad, these kinds of things.  Just a perfect example, right? What do we do with AAC systems? Shove the complex, like he just, he wasn't gonna go there. So I was like, okay, so we need to figure that out, right? So that's a longer conversation, but that's what it looks like. On the other hand, I also am gonna bring in another example that we had where we had a little guy who he had the go talk with four symbols per page who wasn't paying any attention at all. And then all of a sudden he brought a lamp system in and he was right there with us. So this whole thing is so messy. It's really following the lead of the child rather than thinking about what the, so I'm gonna just skip past a whole bunch of slides here because we can talk about this another time, but part of the documentation is we also really need to understand how that child is currently communicating. And here are some tools, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah that we can use. I'll send these slides out if people haven't seen them, that's just fine. We need potentially use the communication matrix, we need to use the pragmatics profile. How are they currently communicating in all the multimodal ways? And then how can we respond back because that's gonna be part of being good communication partners. We also need to understand in all of these kiddos, we need the OTs and the BTs to help us. So it's not just about SLPs and AAC professionals, it's not just about vision professionals, it's also about the other people who can help us understand their motor abilities. It's a very different thing if a child can point and reach in touch than if a child is in the man that the kid that you and I were talking about today who has very limited control over his body. How do we provide an access point for that child? And then there's the whole other issue of sensory challenges. So guys, in an hour, we're not gonna be able to touch on this. What I just really need us to think about is that it is more than just the SLP. The complexity is that most of our AAC systems rely heavily on vision. Even non-aided AAC sign and gesture relies heavily on vision. So we're gonna end with just a couple of ideas of some alternatives. We've alluded to them already, but we're gonna hit them again, some ideas. So one is partner-assisted auditory scanning. This is the pod approach. When you're doing partner-assisted auditory scanning, what you're doing is going through an array of vocabulary. Well, I'm just gonna show you. So bear with me while we do a little bit. I know we're running late on time, but I think this will explain it better than... So can you see the video, Naren? I can see it's gonna have a start, yeah, but yeah. There's nothing to say. Quick chat, something's wrong, I think it's... I want, let's go, do something. I'm asking a question. I wanna show you something.  I have an idea, let's pretend. I'm telling you something. You're doing something. I'm telling you something. Okay, that's all I'm gonna show you because we're running out of time. But the point there that I want to make is that this mom is running, it's a pod. And so the auditory scan and the branching is consistent and regular. So the child can wait, they can hear it. This is the category, these are the branches. Not unlike many of our AAC systems, but it's privileging that auditory component. So following these branches consistently lets the child listen and say, yes, that's the one I want. There's more to this than that. There's all the things that we did last year, the stepping stones to switch access. But the point of auditory scanning is if we're gonna develop language in the kids, it's not just giving them random lists of auditory things to scan, it's giving them a well-constructed, robust language system that they can hear people using and modeling and that they can then start to understand, learn, and predict what it is that they want to say. Hopefully we will have more to say about this very soon, but it's one of the really, I think, important things that we think about with our kids with complex communication needs and CVI is that we need to think about using the auditory modality. The other thing, Marin talked about this. A few of us got together and talked about this whole issue of CVI and kids with complex communication needs. And we said, well, we need to stop talking about high contrast symbols and we need to start talking about symbols that are reduced in complexity and high in saturated color. So we need to potentially reduce the complexity of the array. This is the book that Marin was talking about over here that had one symbol that said, yeah, now we're gonna be using your auditory scanning book. So we're gonna be doing, we're gonna give you an opportunity to say something. So they may not recognize that symbol. They may not even be able to interpret the symbol specifically, but remember, language is abstract. The language that they may be getting there is, oh, it's time to talk. And so, but maybe they're gonna, over time, learn more about what that means. And then using color, the other array is relatively reduced but the colors maybe will help to orientate kids to what it is that we're talking to them about and what it is that they might wanna say. So thinking about using these kinds of things. Marin, do you wanna say anything else about that? I just wanted to add in this book that you have on the right with the multiple symbols. That looks like a book where you can tear off some of the symbols too. So I mean, there's ways of getting around this, right? So if you really wanna teach the symbols, you can tear it right off, isolate it on a black background and try and go that way as well. So having, and again, that's why we need to work together is trying to figure out what is the best way to present this information. And sometimes you're not gonna get it right. Sometimes it's like, well, I didn't work. Let's try this. I mean, that was too many. Maybe that wasn't enough. Maybe they don't see color, these kinds of things, right? So I'm willing to try it out. I think that's important to say we might not get it right. The other piece is to not quit before the magic happens. So it's the dance, right? So anyway, movement. So the interest, I just wanna add one thing about complexity. So here's the thing. I've had really good success using prod with kids, but it's not visual success, right? So don't let vision get in the way. So she still can't handle more than nine symbols on a page, right? She can't handle 70, but she needs the language. So it gets into, there's one symbol and you flip it up and there's 10 words under there, right? So the words can continue with the auditory scanning. We don't, vision shouldn't get in the way of that, right? So maybe vision is never gonna get beyond those nine symbols. That doesn't mean we leave them there language-wise. Maybe vision will never get beyond that first single symbol. True. That doesn't mean we leave them language-wise. Absolutely. So movement, this is where we're gonna go with maybe you need to bring the symbols off, make it, bring them to their attention. And the other thing that was kind of a kick for me was maybe we need to think more about using sign because for some of our kids, as Marin talked about, that movement makes a difference. So if they pay attention to movement more than they pay attention to 2D symbols, maybe we need to be doing sign or at least adding sign into a multimodal mix as we're thinking about these kids. If movement grabs their attention, sign is a movable language that may help. Again, none of these are, this is what you should do. These are ideas for you to consider as you're trying to unpack whatever that child is presenting to you. The other one is privileging motor planning. I get kind of dazzled by some of the systems these days that flip and flip. This may or may not be something that a child with CVI can manage, but the idea that maybe I can just learn how to do a motor plan. There are kids that can, well, there are people, adults that can do this without looking at the systems at all because it's not that I have to look to do it, it's that I have to remember where the motor plan is. So another possibility perhaps for some kids is to explore the idea, now this is LAMP, Language Acquisition to Motor Planning, that also has the back that display all of those other kinds of things that we talked about. So it's a possibility. I put up that, what they're I think calling CVI symbols. Now, whether that really helps or hinders a child because it's so complex, I don't know, but you can also mask some of those symbols. So maybe you need to do some masking to help them to start to learn the motor planning. I just want to say LAMP also developed a tactical key guard. So I actually have students who are totally completely blind, lights out blindness, which is super rare using LAMP with a key guard because it is all based on motor plan and it's based on okay, three over two down, that's the word, right? So don't need vision for that, right? So if the child has good tactile skills that's and terrible vision, that's the way we could go. There you go, it's yeah. The other piece though, I think this is a caution is that some of our kids with CVI have to either listen or look and they can't do both. So if we're trying, we have to really be cognizant are they shutting down? Are they not with us as the engagement going down because maybe if I'm listening to you and you're expecting me to look at the same time, I just can't do that, which is kind of an intriguing thing because it also was something that we hear from people on the autism spectrum. Maren, you wanna talk more about that? Well, I get asked all the time about kids on the spectrum and there are some overlaps in terms of some of the characteristics that they see and that is one of them, that the senses are not well integrated and so they are competing with each other and so sometimes you're talking to the kid and they put their head down, they look like they're not paying attention but it's because they're listening or sometimes that the visual information is overwhelming, they can't listen, right? So I think we need to be mindful about that and not pigeonhole them into a box. And again, it's called a spectrum for a reason. So it doesn't, there's a lot of diversity in terms of how that presents. And I think, and so even if we think about outside of the ASD for kids with CBI, the whole extra energy of trying to use my eyes and listen to you at the same time might be just too much, right? So is, am I? Yeah, definitely, yeah, definitely, yeah. Okay, so all right, the ideas that we gave you today are not the thing, they are ideas. And I think part of this is, and Marin and I had a conversation with this yesterday, is the field of AAC is actually relatively young. The field of AAC dealing with the complexity of the kids that we have. And I didn't talk about the fact that, yeah, in the day we were dealing with kids with cerebral palsy who were intellectually intact and now we're having this wide range of kids who are on our caseloads as well. We need to be creative. We need to come together and we need to use these ideas as seeds to say, maybe I need to think about that. It's not the solution. There's no cookbook. There's no cookbook. That's, I think when we gathered together to talk about this, I think the strongest message is there is no cookbook. There is no strategy. There is no bulletproof solution. I always make the joke that there's, people say, oh, we're doing CVI. And it's like, what does that mean? They're like, well, we have high contrast symbols and we're waving the pom-poms. It's like, no. However, not to underscore the fact that sometimes assessment can be very challenging and these are very complex. So we have compassion at the same time for ourselves and for each other as we're trying to figure this out together. And be gentle with the fact that, this is an ongoing dynamic process that takes time and learning. And humility, I left today feeling, geez, I'm humbled all over again. I just wanted to say one more thing between the CVI, CVI debate. The CVI range, as I said, works brilliantly until it doesn't and that's been my experience with it is there are some kids who just don't fit on that range and I just, in my heart apart, know that they still deserve, warrant vision services because they're not using their vision typically and lots of these kids have a AC need. So it's like, well, what do I, do I stay in the game? Yes, I stay in the game and I use what I know. And so I would encourage you if you're a vision person stay in the game, use what you know and keep learning, keep trying to understand and put yourself in that perspective. You know, often these are kids that we would call mild and I'm gonna argue there's nothing mild when your vision system's not learning and everything you're trying to learn is visual, right? If there's something not right, something's not right and we need to stay on it, well, as we try and piece together that information. And what I would say is it's on us as AAC professionals to invite you in and to really make sure, so this is where we're gonna end. It is essential that vision and communication therapies be integrated. Oh, hang on, I have to move this thing and that vision specialist, speech language pathologists and other professionals work collaboratively with family members to increase the child's ability to use his functional vision so that he or she can access language, communication and participation. So that's from Blackstone and Roman. And then I'm going to say, and it is also essential that vision specialist, speech pathologists and other professionals work together collaboratively with family members to help children develop language so that they can understand, put words to meaning and express, talk about what they are seeing. So with that, I think our ultimate message to y'all tonight and thank you for staying with us a little bit late is that we are better together. We need to be doing more work together and we need to continue these dialogues so that these kids who are deserving of developing their vision while and in concert with developing their ability to communicate and develop language is paramount to them being participants in the world. And I'm going to just say this again, being safe. So thank you all for being here. I hope this was helpful. Naren, you want to say anything as we close? No, I just wanted to say thanks for the opportunity to collaboratively teach and talk because every time that we do, I always learn. I need to hear this thing lots and lots and lots. This is a beginner mind over and over again. So thank you for the opportunity. Yeah, very good. Thank you. And I will open it up if people do have questions or comments I see from Kiri who said, not to put too high contrast symbols together with the same color together. Absolutely. That's kind of using color. We don't want to, if you're using color, two colors at the same place is not using them. Honestly, a lot of what we said tonight is kind of... Surface level. Surface level. And to get to the depth and hopefully we will think about a way to get to the depths will take, would take more than an hour. We just want to give you some things to think about and thanks for all of you for timing in on that. Any other comments or questions before we close? Jalef, see, Leslie had a comment also about wearing solid colors. With the sign. Siding. That's a great comment because that contrast between the hands and the background. Beautiful. Good call. Exactly. And I think that goes with all of it, but for sure, thank you, Leslie. That's great. Very, very important. Thank you for all you guys do. I know everyone on this webinar is out there trying to do the same things that Marin and I are talking about. It is a journey and hopefully in five years we will have more information. But I think for now, and we're all going to go out there and try and explore the best ways to give these kids access to vision, language and communication.


Welcome to Animation Buffet and today's rig review is about gorgeous George and the rig can be found on Gumroad for $15 and it's by Dimitri Kolpakov if I am butchering your name apologize But you will find the rig on gumroad.com slash the Kolpakov And you can see he has already multiple things on there and you can select George here As you can see it's $15 you got everything you need to know here on that site It has example screenshots of the rig. It is item picker compatible with posing and like I said $15, which I already purchased So when you open it up in Maya, this is what you get not exactly in this pose But this is what I use for my thumbnail. You can see the cheats in my pose Well, let's turn this off and you can see here. This is the rig and it's glory with all of the controls It's very cool to have a cartoony rig It's not that often that you can see a cartoony creature rig very detailed you can see here Very reminiscent of the Maximus Character entangled looks overall very cool. And this is the default pose that you get very serious very serious horse Here's the main controller which gives you a couple options on the right here For instance, you can turn the hair off you can turn the accessories off you can turn offset controllers off and So on so you can look at a different type of look here I don't see any texture options. If you look at this here I don't see anything else Where you can modify it a bit more But that's going to be up to you to give this a bit of a difference Non-Maximus look and of course you have your classic controllers in terms of hips You got if you change the hips You got the middle section that you can adjust you also have the chest that moves separately and All the usual suspects in terms of a spline the former for your neck and all of this for your head And what you'll notice here is that if I move the hips all the way back they stretch But there's no stretchy control on the right You actually find these in the chest if I do this you have stretchy options here And if I turn this off you'll see that in the hips Nothing else is moving either so return to default and you got follow you got volume So if I do any type of changes here when I move this guy You can see that with the volume you can adjust the middle section speak of middle You got a middle section here for any type of Bountiness or if you want to change kind of the silhouette or the line of action there You have some options there going closer here. You got on the backside you got Controls for the hips here obviously both sides same thing on the front And even an extra controller down here. So overall super detailed speaking of details You can see here you got extra deformation or depending on what studio you work for they can call them Bend bows or bendies whatever you want to call them But there are everywhere on the front and the back then if you go down here you have the classic controller to move things here for rotate and translate then you have just a Separate controller for here. That's also in IK fashion here, which is really cool If you want to do any type of compression, which is super cool I'm always a big fan of these type of IK options and you got just a separate almost like a toe Flappiness here if you need that for extra Adjustments and if you select here, you can also see there are swivel options for the knee So if you don't want to do this via this controller, you have it via the channel control I'm also a big fan of that. It keeps the curves of the cleaning the graph editor You also have a roll type of foot roll type of thing You also have a roll angle change. So if you do this you can adjust that as well If you take that and you pull it, there's nothing just yet, but you can make it stretchy And it has an anti pop option, which is also really cool and length options to if you want to go All kinds of crazy, but also for mainly for posing and this is a better silhouette So lots of options on the front and the back. They are identical then you got the tail I hate animating tails So here I'm going to take a look at these controls and they give you obviously the FK But at the same time IK control so you can adjust and deform You can do all kinds of things with that which again, I'm not a massive fan of tail animation I prefer wings, but this has nothing to do with this review But I just wanted to always voice my displeasure when it comes to tails here If you adjust the horse for instance if you take this and you move it over and not kind of changes Whatever you're gonna do here you have the option here if you do this it stays put right so you take your Backside here and the tail and all of that stays put because it's in global mode But if you don't like this you can change this down to zero here So whenever you do change the hips you can see that the tail follows If you keep the accessories on on the saddle here, you see controls here, which is pretty cool You can change that and also rotate Same thing here put the feet in there and you have all kinds of adjustments. That is pretty neat like that To both sides obviously there is nothing here to change on these guys here There's also nothing in the layers. So if you look at your horse the geometry is Locked there and there's nothing in the layers to unlock you're gonna have to go inside the hierarchy In your outliner to change that in case you want to and as I showed before obviously with the head If you make any type of changes here You can move your head forward and stretch it out and make it all kinds of crazy You got options obviously to change that if needed This goes all the way down to here if you want to and in this option here You have IK FK blend to give this a spline or an FK option if you so desire So overall very cool. That's a stretchy option separately a cartoony rig option But what's very very cool is the face and there are horse rigs out there But you don't really have a cartoony rig option and if you look at this There's a lot of stuff to play with which is really really cool I'm gonna start with the non-usual thing here that you got the stretchy Front section here again if you want to do any type of change is potentially in the look But in terms of squash and stretch little adjustments here and there also Chin options. I love it. That's great. You got overall eye socket changes Speaking of eye you have your blinks Seems pretty standard there And always trying to scale just in case all that is there if you need to Obviously you can rotate this in all kinds of ways and you have eyebrows if you want to do your Eyebrow changes here There is no option as I can see to use these all as one Controller sometimes you have those separate controllers here Then you have one bigger control to move them all just in case you want to do big changes and these guys as Small adjustments not a huge deal But just wanted to mention that if you select the eye here you can move this like this also in FK mode But as with all you have an eye box or here's an eye controller where you can move your eyes around You can move them also separately and if I change something here, let me see on the head Alright, you got the eyes that are parented to the head, but you can turn this off Yes, you can follow zero and now you can take this controller out You can put this wherever you want to but when you change the head I stay put That's for the main eye movement and if you go in here just as a little detail here You have iris size as well for your cartoony elements, which is cool Then you have on the side here you have again form changes. You got all kinds of head and full from part deformation options here and there's a little bit of Interesting change as you pull this not that you won't ever do go this far But just as a heads up, but it's cool. It's cool that you can really deform the head to all kinds of smear frames potentially and really make extreme shapes out of that. It's very cool Just quickly if I go into the mouth you have of course your controls There is no hair control, but that would be pretty detailed probably slow down your rig as well But so you would have to turn the hair off and add your own hair if you want to animate something there And look at that. Let me see the face. So you got your jaw control With the limits so there is no crazy breaking there is no Breaking in terms of going all the way down all the way up. What's very cool, too There is a squishy factor here. You can see here as the lips go up very cool big fan of that So you have that all look at that So you got your individual lip control, but on top of that you can also adjust the teeth I don't come out, but you can bend them. That's pretty awesome. You got the side control here For the mouth. It's very cool. Yeah, lots of details Surprise that there's this here surprise. I don't know what I was expecting, but that's actually very cool Which means also you can probably Yeah, you can totally change the appearance then to make this you know proper dental hygiene based horse or One that was potentially neglected in terms of dentistry. It's pretty awesome though I like this and if you go back to the head just to see what you have here You got your stretchy option like I said the volume on neck global head global You got all kinds of options here Let me see quickly on the nostrils. So you have movements and if you scale. Yeah, you can scale them in and out There's nothing else there. I think that's pretty much it. There's some controllers here that give you overall teeth lowering and that's probably top and bottom So you have here the top side Adjustment in the lips here. Just watch out.  It's very cool though. I have to say it's really neat There you go So these are all the controls in a nutshell pretty cool And on top of that you have an impecker compatibility So when I bring up an impecker, it comes on the side where it's bring it in You have that here the classic an impecker with all the options Belly all the side straps here and you got that as well It gives you the front and the back. You got the main controller And the tail and all that good stuff whole a leg. Everything is there ready to go. Okay. I look at this. Ah Why why did you do this to me? Oh wait if I look in here tongue controls. Let me see Yes, you do have controls for the tongue your rotate and You got your translates to do all kinds of stuff here Let me see. Yeah All the standard stuff, which is very cool. Gotta say again a cartoony rig per guy, ah It's cool to have it looks really cool lots of options, especially in the face So I'm hoping to see all kinds of facial animation and dialogue pieces with this horse I'm gonna try one myself. I'm gonna say it is now But probably won't have time until we're done on this current project, which is Star Wars at the moment So I'm probably not allowed to say when it's done But once I have time I want to check out this horse and do some tests gorgeous George So there you go You can get this on gum road or if you follow my site animation buffet You see that I just posted that this morning So if you're curious about more rigs go on animation buffet And you will see all kinds of rigs that I'm posting and that's it from me Thank you for watching if you like this as always you can like and subscribe if you want to as I continue to upload on it Almost daily basis almost because not on the weekends. All right. Well, thank you for watching and I will see you in my next clip


Before Injustice, Tekken, Smash Bros., Mortal Kombat, or even Street Fighter, there was another game that let you digitally beat up your friends in a button-mashing melee, and that game is Karate Champ. I absolutely love retro gaming and old technology. I'm a child of the 80s, so consider this episode as our version of a throwback Thursday. I thought it'd be fun to take a quick trip down memory lane and remember this little gem. Now to be honest, this game has not necessarily aged well, and when I say gem, I'm speaking from my own personal nostalgia. There are a lot of gamers who look back at this game and they want to chuck it across the room, but we'll get to that. Video games aren't an escape from our daily routines, and fighting games are no exception. But in a digital world of Hadukins, superheroes, and grotesque finishing moves, it's nice to see a game occasionally try to emulate a realistic fighting experience. Karate Champ was one of the first to attempt this. It was originally released in the arcades in 1984, and there were two primary versions of this game. The first was simply called Karate Champ, and it helped establish the popular one-on-one fighting model. Players controlled their Karateka in a white gi, and they battled against a computer opponent in a red gi. Now, this game was really simple, but it wasn't easy. The whole concept is to execute Karate moves and score two points before your opponent does. Some moves are worth a half a point while others a first point. If you scored two points before the computer did, you won the match and you moved on to the next round. Which was the same thing, but set against a different background. If you lost, the game was over, and that was it. You had to start over again. Now there are also bonus stages in between matches where flower vases are thrown at you. Gah! When that happens, your objective is to either smash or dodge them. In the arcade version, there was even a stage where you face the bull. Could that possibly be a nod toward Kyokushin founder Masayama? Now, shortly after the release of this game was a second version called Karate Champ player vs player, which was basically the same game, but it allowed two people to play simultaneously. This game saw popularity in their arcades and it found itself ported to several home consoles including the Apple II, Commodore 64, and my personal favorite, the NES. I love this game as a kid, mainly because it was extremely ambitious for its limitations and it came at a time in my life when I was starting to become interested in the martial arts and martial arts movies. Now, the NES controller was a bit limited, you know, with only a directional pad and two main buttons, so games had to get creative. Most games were limited to just a jump or a base attack function, but not Karate Champ. With only the directional pad and two buttons or joysticks in your arcade, players were able to execute 24 different functions. That was pretty incredible at the time and that set the stage for a lot of strategy. I mean, just take a look at the manual and you can see that they really made the most of the controller functions. And most of the moves were basic Karate moves, no throwing spears, teleporting, or ice balls, but front kicks, reverse punches, and sweeps. So why do some people like to dump on this game? I mean, the concept was so great, so what's not to love about a fighting game that lets you do 24 maneuvers with only two buttons? Mainly the fact that you have 24 moves and only two buttons! The main problem with this game comes down to play control. It's a little complicated and it's not quite as responsive as one would hope. There's a slight delay and the timing takes a little bit to get used to. Now, I can only speak for the NES version. I never played the arcade, but here's where I struggled with it the most. It's actually really 10 strikes in four directional segments, forward, back, jump, and duck. So that's 14. So how did we get to 24? Well, that's because if you get on the other side of your opponent, you'll be facing away from them and completely vulnerable until you do a jumping back kick and switch directions. When you switch directions, you're facing the other way, which means all those 10 strikes now operate with a reverse button sequence. So to do a front kick facing the right, you would press the directional pad to the right and the A button. But if you were facing the left, you would press the directional pad left and the B button. So essentially, each attack had two key combinations to do, and it got confusing and clunky pretty quickly. Now, overall, in my opinion, it's not a bad game at all. I have very fond memories of it. Yes, the play control is clunky, but you can't get used to it.  The game also saw a re-release on the iPhone as an app. So if any of you Apple users feel like getting your retro on, that might be a fun one to check out. Just watch out for those flying vases. So that's it for today. Thank you so much for taking a moment to geek out with me and taking a look at some martial arts video game history. And for those of you who also appreciate vintage technology, I just want to say as a disclaimer that this is not an artificial VHS filter look. No, this episode has been brought to you today via an authentic, bona fide, and somehow still working VHS camera. So thanks for watching. Please like, subscribe, and let me know in the comments if you have any memories playing this or any other martial arts game.