For our Tuesday, July 11, DACS meeting we had an overview of the Voice For Joanie program by its founder Shirley Fredlund, and a demonstration by David Goldberg, president of Health Science, of several of the assistive technologies they use.

Shirley opened the presentation by showing a short DVD video on the program, both describing it and showing it in action. In the video there were several DACS members who have given freely of their time providing technical support.

What is the Voice for Joanie program?

It is a group of dedicated volunteers who research computer technology and then adapt it to the needs of victims of ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease). Voice For Joanie has furnished, at no charge, Voice For Joanie communicators to a total of 488 people, 459 in 139 Connecticut towns, 13 in New York State and 16 in various other states.

Voice For Joanie communicators are used in various ways. Typed messages are “spoken” by the voice synthesizer, read from a printer or screen or transmitted via telephone or over the Internet.

Following Shirley’s opening, David Goldberg demonstrated several products his company sells. The first one was a portable voice synthesizer that can be used at various stages of debilitating muscular and nerve illnesses. It has a touch screen so the user that has the use of a hand or just a finger or touch stick can operate it.

The next one, which he spent most of the evening on, was a new release of My Tobii. The My Tobii Eye Control System offers easy to use and truly effective communication for people with highly limited mobility. The MyTobii system consists of a computer and display that can detect precisely where the user is looking on the screen and together with a suite of application software allow the user to communicate and interact using only his or her eyes without any external devices. It also has touch screen capabilities and a keyboard and mouse.

With My Tobii a user can generate speech, send and receive email, surf the Internet and use any other Windows based application. All this is accomplished with just the movement of the eyes.

During his demonstration he invited several audience members to use the My Tobii system. This writer was one of the volunteers and was amazed at what the system could do with very little effort. Training the machine to calibrate it to my eyes took less then a minute and I was off.

Although the machine is fairly expensive it certainly works well and the developers have thought of everything. For a person who is limited to eye movement it is a godsend.

It was also interesting to find out that many advertising agencies are starting to use it to detect where ad viewers are looking when they view advertising.

The evening was informative and DACS thanks David and Shirley for their time and effort.

By the way, if you want more information about Voice for Joanie or you would like to volunteer your time you can send an email to Shirley Fredlund (voiceforjoanie@juno.com).