Thought from the day. Thinking About Brain Injury -- How Emoji's helped got me thinking about Aphasia.

This is how a missing emoji 🚫😀led to some deep thoughts about Aphasia. 

I'm sat at my desk typing up a future social media post about one of our upcoming events and looking at it I think “I know the perfect emoji to add to this.”

Because as we all know, adding an emoji to social media posts, or a website article 👋, can increase reach and make it look more appealing to a viewer.

But the one I want, in this case the Discoball, isn't there.

 

"Hmm that's weird." I think to myself, did I make this up? I check a search engine. No its just called a mirrorball not a discoball. Okay I search my emojis again. Nothing!

Was it removed?
No the emoji does still exist. Maybe I am doing something wrong.

So I do what any social media person would do. I find it on an emoji database and copy it from the clickable.

It doesn't load in. All I am left with is a blank box where there should be a discoball.

Fast forward past too much time going backwards and forwards between my search engine and my document and it turns out; my pc doesn’t support all emojis yet. I can hit the copy button somewhere with it saved but all I will see is an empty box.
It’s there, but I cannot get it. It’s there but I cannot see it. Technically I can use it, through this longer copy and paste method from an emoji database, but I must trust that the emoji will show for other people.

Testing this, if I directly copy it from the emoji database and send it to someone on a device that does show this emoji. Then it shows up.
If I copy my copy from within the document, nothing.
So every time I try to use it, I have to load another webpage, search the mirror ball, click copy on the little button on the page, have the Unicode copied, and the page close behind me (that being the only reason I cannot keep it open).
So much added time. For decorative emoji on a social media post.

 

It got me Thinking about Brain Injury. That is what Headway is all about after all.

Some of our members will sometimes struggle to find a word. They know it exists, it should be there, but they cannot get to it.
Or they will say it, but the other person doesn’t seem to understand.
It may take them time to search for their word, stumbling and stuttering their way forward.

 

Aphasia, the term for language impairment due to issues within the brain, can affect around 20% to 40% of survivors, and has a few different ways of presenting. Several of these are represented by different members within our services here at Headway Kent.

A person with Aphasia may think they are speaking normally, but saying only gibberish, sometimes a string of random words or the same sound over and over.

They may be unable to grab the word, saying things that are Almost correct, but not what they meant.

They may stutter as the word they want suddenly leaves their mind, or they forget the name of a thing while describing it perfectly.

Aphasia has been described as having to go deep sea fishing for your words. Like delivering a presentation on zoom just to be told your microphone was muted the entire time and nobody heard you.

And perhaps, it’s like trying to use an emoji that your computer cannot see, but you know is there.