Speech Assistance
If you have difficulty speaking but have fairly good handwriting, you might consider using the Tablet PC Speech Assistant software. This software was written by Todd Landstad, for someone he knew who had Motor Neurone Disease, (also known as ALS). Todd worked for a number of years in the Tablet PC team at Microsoft. The Tablet PC Speech Assistant software runs on Tablet PCs or Ultra-mobile PCs, (UMPCs). UMPCs are less expensive than Tablet PCs and are more portable.
With the Tablet PC Speech Assistant, you can use a mix of handwriting and phrase selection to build up a sentence that you want to have spoken. For example, you may have the phrase "Could you get me" in a list where it can be quickly selected, and then you might handwrite the remainder of the sentence. The software will try to anticipate what you might be writing as you start to write it.
To learn more about the Tablet PC Speech Assistant software, click Tablet PC Speech Assistant.
UB Talker
For some people, it will not be practical to use the Tablet PC Speech Assistant software. If you have the ability to move a mouse and can use it to click pictures on the computer screen, perhaps other software that might be of interest to you is UB Talker. UB Talker is assistive technology originally built my Mike Buckley, a professor at the University of Buffalo, and his students. This software is not free, but might be covered by insurance or Medicare in the US.
To learn more about the UB Talker software, click Socially Relevant Computing.
