Communicating with me
The Basics
If I look up, that means ‘Yes’
If I look down, that means ‘No’
If I look cross eyed, that means ‘I don’t know‘
If I look up and down rapidly, it’s called flashing and it means I want to spell something
using my 'e-trans board
'.
Using my e-trans board
My e-trans comprises a sheet of
perspex a bit bigger than A4. Letters of the alphabet are grouped in
each corner of the board. Within each corner group, all the letters are
a different colour. There are also six coloured blobs arranged around the board.
You stand facing me and hold the
board up between us. Make sure you get it the right way round. The side
marked ‘Bram’s side’ needs to face me. You look at my
face through the hole in the middle of the board.
I will look at a corner. You use your hand to indicate the corner you
think I’m looking at, saying “This corner?” If you
have the right corner, I will look up. If I look down, try a different
corner.
Once we have identified a corner, I
will look at one of the coloured blobs. That gives you a corner and a
colour. Looking at your side of the board, you can put the corner and
colour together to get a letter. For example, bottom right green is the
letter ‘S’.
We do that for every single letter.
It can seem daunting at first, but
don’t give up. No one has ever got worse at using the board with
me. Everyone makes mistakes when using it - even me. If I think we have
made a mistake I will look away from the board, or just stare at you
until you twig that there is something wrong. If the mistake has
happened in the middle of a sentence, read out the sentence word by
word. I will confirm each word by looking up, until you get to the
mistake. Likewise, if the mistake is in the middle of a long word, go
through it letter by letter.
It is a really good idea to write
words down as I spell them. Note that there is no ‘SPACE’
character on the e-trans board. So if you find yourself thinking,
‘There is no word in english that starts T.H.E.F.I...‘,
bear in mind that I may be in the process of spelling ‘the
fish’ or ‘the fire’.
