Communication Devices for Stroke Victims?

chowbok asks: "My grandmother recently had a stroke, which left her with the inability to speak or move the right half of her body. It also seriously impaired her motor skills on the half she can move, so she can't write. She does understand what is said to her, but she has no way to communicate. I'd like to set something up for her so that she can write notes. What I have in mind is a keyboard with rather large keys (perhaps 2" square) and a screen or monitor of some sort. I'm sure they make such stuff specifically for stroke victims, but anything labeled 'medical' will undoubtedly be astronomically expensive, even if it is a rather simple device like what I have in mind. I thought it would be easier to build one or find something similar (perhaps a toy or some such). I thought Slashdot readers might have some good suggestions along these lines. I'm not totally against doing it with a computer with a modified keyboard, but that seems like overkill when all I want is really a 'video typewriter'. Has anyone seen anything that might work for my purposes, or might serve as a good starting point?"

Comments

T9, phrase-based, joystick, ???

[cybermace5]

Couple of ideas here.

You don't want to make it painstakingly slow for her to type out a sentence. That makes it really hard for even an oversized keyboard to work.

A keyboard with 2" keys will be over 28" wide. Moving from key to key will be even more difficult when her arm gets tired. Keyboards are optimized for two-hand use; it's tiring enough using even a regular keyboard with one hand. (Stop it! This is serious!)

A version of T9 input gets around the size limitation; she could operate a 6"x8" pad easily without moving too far. If there was a custom app that let her tree down through word lists, that would be ideal. Say she wants to say "granddaughter." She hits the 4-G-H-I key once and a pointer scrolls to the G's. Then she hits the 7-P-Q-R-S key three times to get to the gr's (a list of perhaps half a dozen words). She could hit the 2-A-B-C key once to narrow it down further, or use a scroller wheel to select the right word. If a word does not exist in the database, she can enter a non-matching mode to tap in the word so she can use it later.

Another method, if she has even less dexterity, is a joystick or wheel that can scroll through letters and words, perhaps in a directory-like fashion as above. Only requires two basic movements and a button press, and hardware is easily custom-built. Common phrases can be added, or even custom mad-libs type templates for common conversation topics, requests, etc.

Hope this helps in some way!

Re:T9, phrase-based, joystick, ???

[aberson]

I can't remember the name, and google isn't behaving, but a while back there was something where you dragged your mouse to the right over the letter you wanted to choose. All letters were represented, but in different sizes depending on how likely it was that it would appear. Coupling that with a joystick would be perfect.

low-tech approach

[jon doh!]

if you're willing to do something in the interim, my wife's grandmother had a plastic coated sheet of paper she used when she was in the hospital and couldn't talk. It was divided into grids and had pics and words for common phrases such as "i'm tired", "i'm hungry", "it hurts.. (then a drawing of the human body for her to point to)", "i'm thirsty", lots of others. they actually had it at the hospital, but it would be easy to make one up. maybe several with different sets of phrases even..