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Afforda
Speech's Business Approach
 For AAC
(Augmentative/Alternative Communication) devices to be "truly
accessible", they first need to be affordable
to those people who need them, and secondly, they need
to be transportable so they can use it
wherever they happen to be. Afforda Speech is dedicated
to bringing both affordable and transportable
solutions to the assistive device market.
Affordability
It is a well known fact
that vast majority of AAC (Augmentative/Alternative
Communication) devices on the market today are too
expensive to be afforded by those very people who need
these devices. There are, of course, valid reasons why AAC
devices are so expensive. In general, the target market
for AAC devices is small; the costs of R&D and NRE
expenses are high; plus, there are overall less number of
units manufactured per product line. This reduces
the ability to amortize overhead costs such as marketing, business
development and advertising.
Afforda Speech looked
at the factors that contributed to high costs and came
up with the following design strategy for affordability:
- use and integrate
off-the-shelf components whenever possible,
including casing, subassemblies or even entire
products,
- use
rapid-prototyping techniques to reduce R&D time
and costs,
- use rapid
application development tools to reduce software
programming times,
- reduce costs of
marketing and advertising through referral programs,
- extensive use of the
internet for information, updates and support.
Transportability
Many AAC devices on the
market that offer practical functionality also tend to
be bulky, heavy and have a short battery life. For
these reasons, they are often not suited for
transportability.
Afforda Speech is
focused on making these AAC devices transportable so
that you can take them with you where you need them the
most. Afforda Speech's design strategy for
transportability is as follow:
- design devices to be
battery-operated and palm sized when possible,
- if this is not achievable at
reasonable cost, then design them to be wearable,
- if not wearable, design them
to be portable,
- if not portable, design them
to be transportable.
Thus in all cases, the
AAC devices can be taken along by the individual and
used in his/her daily activities.
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