With the emergence of the computer as a basic tool in the workplace, typing is an essential vocational skill. People who are unable to fully utilize standard keyboards have significantly lower typing rates. Abbreviation expansion is a powerful technique for significantly increasing this rate. Current exspanders restrict themselves to fixed abbreviation schemes to achieve acceptable performance. This restriction imposes unnecessary burdens on both its user and the person charged with constructing tbis scheme for that user. Adaptive Flexible Abbreviation Expansion is an innovative technology synthesizing all the best features of current technologies while avoiding their drawbacks. While there is a demonstrated need for an abbreviation expander that frees its user from memorizing any specific scheme, can adjust itself to its user's preferences and patterns, can produce a fixed scheme if necessary, and is independent of any specific application, the problem is that none is yet being developed. Now that advances in computer hardware make a more sophisticated solution practical, this project answers that need by producing the Flexible Adaptive Expander based on Adaptive Flexible Abbreviation Expansion.Summary: Successful completion of Phase II yields the Flexible Adaptive Expander as a commercially available software pmduct. The implications of this include its use as typing rate enhancement tool with other software products; as the abbreviation expander of a communication device; as a clinical aid for clinicians charged with preparing for their client a communication device containing a fixed abbreviation scheme expander, and as an automatic abbreviator for anyone desiring to establish an abbreviation scheme for a given set of words.
Keywords: Adaptive Flexible Abbreviation Expansion, Typing Rate Enhancement, Abbreviation Expansion, Word Compansion, Augmentative Alternative Communication, Computer Command Name Abbreviation, Communication Rate Enhancement, Acceleration Vocabulary Topic 2: Innovative Technologies to Enhance Job Development, Job Modification, Job Opportunities, or Transition from School to Work for Individuals with Disabilities
