ITHACA - Home Page

National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Department of Informatics and Telecommunications

ITHACA Framework

Open Source Development of
Augmentative and Alternative
Communication Applications

Overview

Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) attempts to compensate for temporary or permanent impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions of individuals with disorders of speech-language production and/or comprehension, including spoken and written modes of communication. ITHACA framework is an Open Source, component-based environment that facilitates software developers and application integrators to build and assemble computer-based interpersonal AAC aids.

Developers
AAC software companies, developers and independent Open Source code contributors may use ITHACA guidelines and tools to construct AAC software modules. Available resources (documents, open source code, and compiled program and components) can be downloaded from this site.

Integrators
Specialized AAC resellers, therapists, and educational-rehabilitation organizations are welcome to download the ITHACA main executable program and open source peripheral components. Until now, all software is free, but commercial components may be added in the future (licensing and distribution will be managed by the commercial components owners in this case). User manuals and application assembly guidelines are also available online.

Examples of final ITHACA-based applications

MAKATON communication aid with automatic scanning support.

PCS communication aid with directed scanning.

Bliss communication aid using direct selection.

Greek virtual keyboard with scanning support.

If you are a Developer and wish to contribute in Open Source development of ITHACA framework or ITHACA components, please send us an e-mail in order to get access (user name and password) to the "Developers' Forge".

If you are an Integrator an need support, documentation, user manuals, updated versions of ITHACA components, please send us an e-mail in order to get access (user name and password) to the "Integrators' Resources"