www.raisingaimee.co.uk

I was asked

"What am I actually making a donation towards and why do you ask for a donation for access to the additional downloads section of your site surely you would make more money if you sold these cool widgets individually"

The decision to ask for a donation rather than sell the widgets is simple

Choice,

Rather than force people to pay to download I thought it would be a nice idea to allow you the choice to decide if any of the widgets were worth payment.
Since 2005 I have received £770.65p in donations most of this is currently in Aimee's bank account, I have used some of this to purchase fibre optic lighting for Aimee's bedroom, the optical cable has been run inside the plastic cladding on the room wall creating a slow flicker/moving colour glow across part of the wall which Aimee loves to watch.

The additional downloads section of my site was created as a way for me to say "Thank You" to the people who had made a donation, access to this section is not automatic once a donation has been made as I have to manually edit the users details to allow access this is the reason you may not be able to access it for a day or so.

What are the donations used for,

The donations are used to help towards purchasing items that will help Aimee develop and enhance her communication skills, As most people who visit the site are aware Aimee is autistic with severe learning difficulties and no speech, she communicates using a PECS book and sentence strip

Over the years I have bought and created small point and click games for Aimee and gradually she has figured out how to use the computer, she still clicks the icons numerous times when nothing appears to be happening (don't we all) only for 20 or so instances of the game to open simutainiously :)

I have tried to develop a computer based PECS book for Aimee as she can get really frustrated and upset if the pictures on the sentence strip are not lined up straight,
but with limited success as I am not as clever as I think I am (who is).

I was made aware of a communication device called SayIt Sam

This is basically a touch screen talking computer, you can import your own graphics/photos and edit the text so that it will display and "speak" the sentance that has been selected
ultimately I would like to get this for Aimee as I believe it would benefit her and make interaction with people who are not used to PECS symbols less frustrating for Aimee.