On a similar theme, this week ds tried out a MyTobii P10 eye pointing computer system, the communication people werent sure how he would do as the youngest they had previously tried with it was a boy of 8.
Ds was an absolute star! He got the calibration bit done on the first go and then proceeded to turn pages and select pictures and phrases etc on the various software programs it came with.
one of the programs was a picture that was covered with different coloured squares which you had to look at in the correct order to reveal the picture, what colour to choose was written at the top of the screen so the woman was explaining how it worked to us and said to ds can you look at "red" and he looked at the word red rather than the colour! PMSL
another program spoke what symbols and phrases were selected and ds kept "saying" i like chocolate, i like pizza, can i have the television on etc
it was an absolutely fabulous device and had a keyboard screen where you could type a particular letter and either select the letter or a symbol starting with that letter, to make up sentences, then you selected a mouth symbol and the computer spoke the sentence, he particularly like this screen as the "girl" had a nice voice and he kept getting her to repeat it.
it also has various software for stuff like playing music, turning on and off lights, browsing the web etc, so would suit adults as well as children.
he was on it for over an hour and afterwards i asked the woman how she thought he had done compared to others she had tried with it.
she said that ds was only the 2nd success that she had with it!!
the other was a man who had an acquired brain injury so knew how to speak etc before his accident so found it easy to use.
i was gobsmacked, i knew he was good at eye pointing and loves computers so this was the obvious thing to try with him but i was suprised that he did so well.
Only thing is the one she costed for the man included a wheelchair mount etc which ds would not need just now so i did a search on the web and found what he would need costs £11,300, so i thought maybe something for the future....hopefully the prices will come down and the technology will no doubt improve over time , but it made me really optimistic for his future that he could accesss stuff like this as he cant really do a thing for himself and his hands are next to useless to him but with something like this
the woman said that the education department would only fund this if it was proven to be the ONLY method of communication he could use and would look at all the low tech methods first, he already uses a colour coded symbol board with 16 choices on it and can on occasion hit a switch but it takes a LOT out of him and after the first few attempts his dystonia kicks in and he cant do it and gets frustrated....the only time he got frustrated with this was when we switched it off!
spoke to a few people about charities and fundraising and today a good friend said she would ask someone she knows who runs a charity if they could help and also said her sons work might be able to do something to, so fingers crossed!!