Daley Ponderings

Colin Portnuff, a guy who uses an AAC (alternative augmentative communication) device to communicate, was recently at a conference that some guys from my company (DynaVox) also went to.
He has ALS, which is a degenerative disease of the brain. A number of our customers have ALS; I am not sure about percentages compared to other handicaps.

It is usually inspiring to hear AAC users speak about their lives, and how they have overcome various problems in an enthusiatic way and Colin is certainly not the exception to this rule. To clarify, I say, "usually", because I occasionally I do see our devices being used, or rather not being used, in people lives as well.I don't think I will ever forget the time I visited an school here in Pittsburgh and spent maybe twenty minutes in a classroom of about 8 students and two teachers. One student was actively using one of our devices, and though a little shy at first, quickly warmed up to us, and was chatting and wouldn't let us leave without a hug at the end. Another student was excited to see us, but either was on the wrong page, or couldn't find what he wanted to say, so pushed lots of random buttons instead. I was sadden to see the teacher, instead of trying to figure out what the child wanted to say, pushed the "setup" button, which effectively turns off the kid's voice, because he was unable to physically push the setup button to get back to the regular pages.

Fortunately, I have seen that the majority of people who use our devices have a better environment than that child and I can hope that the devices and improvements we make can have a significant impact on the lives of our customers.

I guess I got on a tangent there -- so back to the original point of this post:

Colin gave a bit of a speech at the end of one meeting, and he posted the full text to his blog. There was one quote (among others) that I thought particularly well-said, and also good to think about as a person who helps to make technological devices to help people communicate better:

"The best technology in the world can not make me undisabled. That is, it cannot take away my disability. It can, however, enable me to do quite a bit, and it can empower me."