A Stakeholder Value Framework for Augmentative and Alternative Communication

Research Background and Issues

• Identified Problems or Challenges: Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) technologies aim to support individuals with complex communication needs, but they face challenges such as difficulty in personalizing devices, high cognitive load, poor integration with non-verbal communication, low usage rates, and device abandonment. These issues are particularly pronounced in single-input modality devices (e.g., switch scanning).
• Significance: Globally, there are approximately 97 million individuals with complex communication needs, including both children and adults, who often require AAC tools to overcome language barriers. This large and diverse population urgently needs more effective support to enhance their social inclusion and communication capabilities.
• Research Motivation and Related Work: The study responds to calls from industry and academia to more comprehensively consider the contexts of AAC usage, including physical environments, social settings, and the personal characteristics of language users. There is a growing need to integrate user experience and ethical design considerations with traditional performance optimization research.

Proposed Solution

• Proposed Solution: The authors employ the "Value Sensitive Design (VSD)" approach to propose a "Stakeholder Value Framework," which describes the multidimensional roles and values of both direct and indirect stakeholders involved in AAC design.
• Innovations:
  • Introduced multidimensional value themes, including adaptability, safety, performance, independence, equity, and social acceptability.
  • Considered the values of both AAC device users and indirect stakeholders such as their families, educators, and healthcare providers.
• Implementation Steps:
  1. Empirical Investigation: Gathered direct feedback from AAC users and their communication partners through online questionnaires and interviews.
  2. Conceptual Investigation: Conducted a systematic review of AAC-related research literature in the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) field to expand the analysis of stakeholders and values.
  3. Data Coding and Thematic Analysis: Created a value codebook based on survey results and supplemented it with implicit values identified in the literature.
  4. Comprehensive Analysis: Synthesized findings from both investigations to propose a systematic stakeholder value framework for AAC.

Research Outcomes

• Specific Outcomes:
  • Identified and described key value themes in AAC usage and design, including: usability, adaptability, social acceptability, safety, achieving personal goals (e.g., satisfaction and learning growth), performance optimization, and promoting user independence. Additional values, such as design goals and business objectives, were extended beyond those covered by empirical investigations.
  • Proposed a stakeholder framework based on multidimensional roles, encompassing various stakeholder groups (e.g., users, communication partners, designers, policymakers).
• Advantages: Compared to traditional performance-driven design, this research places greater emphasis on social and ethical factors, better supporting social inclusion and the diverse needs of user groups.
• Experimental or Evaluation Results:
  • The study received valid feedback from AAC users (13 participants) and communication partners (14 participants), as well as extracted value themes from 45 academic papers.
  • Experiments demonstrated that users' communication experiences are significantly influenced by value themes such as social acceptability and adaptability.
• Limitations and Future Directions:
  • The small sample size limits the generalizability of the research, necessitating validation through broader global data.
  • Future work may explore conflicts between technical and ethical values, as well as deeper connections between values, such as balancing performance with personalized expression.

These findings provide AAC designers with a comprehensive tool framework to support more effective and ethically conscious design decisions, while also highlighting important future directions, such as enhancing interaction support for user communities and optimizing culturally adaptive technologies.