Appius Claudius, a Roman statesman said, “Each man is the architect of his own fate.” I find this statement to be true. At the end of my last blog I had mentioned about the man upstairs having a plan for me. Ever since I can remember, I wanted to work in healthcare. I always found [...]
Sometimes, I have to just shake my head in amazement at the way people know each other so well that seemingly incomprehensible communication is understood.
One of my favorite examples of this came from a friend of mine. Her father was pumping gas while the rest of the family waited inside the car. He looked at [...]
During my junior and senior years of high school, I went half a day to school and half a day to the career center where I took computer programming and my English class. Due to the small class size, the same teacher, Ms. Tucker, taught both junior and senior level English courses. One day, I [...]
A number of years ago, I worked with a young adult I’ll call Frank. Frank had a traumatic brain injury about 10 years before I met him. He first came to see me because he was ready to look at voice-output communication devices. Until that time he had been using his speech (which was very [...]
Did you know that typically developing children from literate homes have heard their favorite stories 200 to 400 times (Adams, 1990)? For some students with significant disabilities, access to books can be challenging. Many students have difficulty manipulating books due to physical disabilities (ex., cerebral palsy) while others have difficulty accessing books due to sensory [...]
Many students with complex communication needs use symbol schedules at school, and benefit from the support that these schedules offer for understanding, planning for, and managing the events of the day. Have you ever thought about having some schedules ready for unexpected, rarely occurring, or difficult situations? It is truly counter-intuitive, I know, because we [...]
Quickfires have been described with the catch phrase “Big Impact! Little Words!” in a downloadable introductory video on the Implementation Toolkit – http://www.dynavoxtech.com/training/toolkit/details.aspx?id=366. The word, “wait” is no different. It is a little word with a lot of power which you will find it in Quickfires.
V, V+, Vmax, Vmax+, Maestro – Young Adult, Adult and [...]
There was a strand recently on a listserve in which a question was asked as to the appropriateness of peers using an individual student’s AAC device. This is a very appropriate and important question.
It seems to me that this question may have arisen from hearing about a technique known as Partner Augmented Input (PAI) or [...]
I’m 46 years old and would love to think I know a lot. It’s 2011 so all elevators should be brought to code, automatic doors should have electronic eyes so they won’t shut on people, and buses should announce every stop so a disabled person can know where they need to get off. If you [...]
The other day we were out to eat with some friends. A young lady came up to the
table and began asking me about the machine that I was using. I told her about
the DynaVox V and explained that I had a brain aneurysm which left me unable to
speak. She then proceeded to tell me about [...]
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