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> >
> >BK> Hi all,
> >BK> I am starting to help the son of a friend that has Cerebal Palsey. His
> >BK> case is severe but he can make repeatable sounds so I will try to adapt
> >BK> Dragon Dictate to his needs.
> >
> >BK> The biggest question I have so far is "What are the 100 most commonly
> >BK> used EVERYDAY words in the English Language?"
My main suggestion would be to get in touch with Alliance for Technology
Access (ATA). One of the things they do is evaluations to help match
people who have disabilities to the appropriate technology. You can
find a list of their centers at http://www.ataccess.org/
I work at one of the ATA centers, and I have seen people who have C.P.
and extremely dysarthric speech, who are able to use Dragon Dictate.
(It is my understanding that DragonDictate creates a voice file "from
the ground up", so it's good for people with non-standard voices. It's
not really that important if another person can understand him or not,
whats important is that he is able to reproduce sounds consistently.
I wouldn't worry too much about just limiting yourself to 100 words:
start with a small vocabulary, and then you can increase it as his
recognition improves.
Some people on this listserv have been talking about computer access
through switches (switch scanning). This is the slowest form of
computer access possible. If he were able to use Dragon Dictate, it
would be a lot faster. In any case, I would recommend getting in touch
with the ATA for an evaluation, because they have probably worked with a
lot of people who have the same issue, and they might be able to steer
you towards some other access technology (alternative keyboards/mouse
controls, etc.) It would be really impossible for someone to say what
the right technology is for him without having done an evaluation.
Hope this helps...
Margaret
>
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