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Record W4411209628 · doi:10.1080/10400435.2025.2499621

Website navigation: Access to online resources to determine eligibility for augmentative & alternative communication (AAC) technology in Canada

2025· article· en· W4411209628 on OpenAlex
Jillian T. Henderson, Tracy A. Shepherd, Shane D. Pinder, Beata Batorowicz, T. Claire Davies

Why this work is in the frame

A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.

affAt least one author lists a Canadian institution in the pinned OpenAlex snapshot.
fundA Canadian funder is recorded on the work.
aboutThe title or abstract carries a Canadian signal from the geographic lexicon.

Bibliographic record

VenueAssistive Technology · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldHealth Professions
TopicAssistive Technology in Communication and Mobility
Canadian institutionsQueen's University
FundersSocial Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
KeywordsAugmentative and alternative communicationAssistive technologyComputer scienceUniversal designTelecommunicationsMultimediaWorld Wide WebMedicineHuman–computer interaction

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Alternative and augmentative communication (AAC) systems enable interaction by persons with speech impairments, yet access to these devices is limited. In 2019, the Government of Canada introduced "The Accessible Canada Act" to reduce barriers. Availability of information online about AAC systems can reduce barriers to many Canadians who have difficulty attending in-person appointments. While Ontario's Assistive Device Program has been reviewed, other government-funded and charitable organizations across Canada have not been assessed for readability and accessibility. This research aims to evaluate the websites of organizations across Canada that provide AAC technology access, either through equipment loans or financial assistance programs. Forty-three eligible organizations were identified. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines scores (A, AA, and AAA) and four readability scores (Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease, Flesch Kincaid Grade Level, Gunning Fog, and age range) for each website were determined. Thirteen of 43 sites scored below the recommended standard of 75 for WCAG score, and Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease score indicated 86% were more difficult to read than standard recommendations for web content. To enhance equity in AAC device access, online availability of information and forms of government programs and charitable organizations must be easily understood and barrier-free.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.001
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.003
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesMeta-epidemiology (narrow)
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: Observational
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.755
Threshold uncertainty score1.000

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0010.003
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.000
Bibliometrics0.0020.004
Science and technology studies0.0010.001
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0020.003
Research integrity0.0010.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.090
GPT teacher head0.493
Teacher spread0.403 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it