Linggo is a Canadian-based tech company pioneering Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC). AAC is how people communicate without talking—augmentative means adding to a person's speech. Alternative communication is used instead of speech, and everyone uses alternative forms of communication whether someone has a speech disorder or not. Examples of low-tech options are gesturing, hand waving, writing, drawing, or pointing to photos.
To learn more about their platform, I interviewed Ling Ly Tan, M.ADS, BCBA, CEO of Linggo, a Board-Certified Behavior Analyst with 18 years of clinical experience delivering behavioral interventions for people with autism and developmental disabilities.
What is Linggo?
Ling: Linggo is an assistive technology that makes communication accessible for people who have difficulty speaking, like those with aphasia due to stroke or brain injury, or people with neurodevelopmental disorders, autism, and other developmental disabilities accompanied by a speech disorder or developmental delay.
Do you work primarily with kids or adults?
Ling: I work with children with autism in the Ontario program as a clinical supervisor, and I've been working in the space for almost two decades now. We also work in the space of aphasia.
How did you get Linggo started?
Ling: I've been in this field for a long time and a majority of my clients – children or adults – have very limited speech. I oversee these therapy programs, and a large part of my role is determining treatment and goals around behavior communication, life skills, play skills, and social skills.
When it comes down to it, communication is essential for building on a number of skills across different developmental domains. The majority of children we serve are nonverbal or have limited speech and work with a communication system. So these [AAC methods] are either paper-based or high-tech systems. My job is to train the staff and parents on how to use it, to teach them those skills.
A lot of them are very hands-on with these communication devices, but I found that many were limited. The children were not meeting their potential because these systems were not easy to use. If I dream of all the features that would make an AAC effective for the learner but also help them generalize communication and language, that was my inspiration to make it happen because it hasn't changed much since the eighties and nineties, the design, the technology, so I just felt like it was about time [to make it].
How do you use it?
Ling: I'll pull it up on my phone. Okay. Linggo. Perfect. So this is just a very basic setup. You have my wants and needs here. I want to say "I want to," "go school." "I want go to school." By building on the sentence I can eventually print out on the screen "I want to go to school."
Users can add words from a left-right on the phone, similar to how we read and write − a traditional communication system. The number one competitor out there is more grid style, ProloQuo2Go, and this is what I've been using with clients for years. A common setup. However, with ProloQuo2Go you have to remember your setup each time.
Do they have to learn about it in the clinic first, or can they do it at home?
Ling: Communication training is important. You can't just hand a person an iPhone with the app and expect them to communicate. There is a component of communication, training, and effective communication conditioning that helps them promote that independent communication.
But it is intended for use at home and at school. Anywhere basic communication is.
Where are you going with this technology in the future?
Ling: We [want to] provide education and training using assistive communication technology to build language, that's our first step. Big vision, because Linggo also has a backend for AI and machine learning, and natural language processing. It can also use smart technology to help predict word for word (or sentence for sentence) to analyze progress. Our end goal and motto is to make communication accessible.
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