In 1997, Kevin received the Bob Love Award of Excellence from the National Black Association of Speech-Language Hearing and in 2000 he received the First-Person Leadership Award from the 9th Symposium on Literacy and Disabilities and the Kent State Student Leadership Award for work with Resident Services Networking Department. In 2001, he received the Kent State Student Leadership Award for working with Ability Unlimited, the student organization for people with disabilities.

Kevin has many honors and accomplishments to his credit. He presented "African-American Experience with AAC" for the 2000 Conference of the International Society for Augmentative and Alternative Communication. Washington, D.C.; "Inspirations and Motivations for users of AAC" for the 2000 Technology Assistance for Special Consumers Conference in Huntsville, Alabama; and "Accessible Travel with Attendants" for the Pittsburgh Employment Conference in 2001.

PRC Administrative Assistant to R&D, Janie Burgan says, "Kevin is one of the best speakers I've ever heard or seen. He's smart and he has a great personality. His personality shines through when he is presenting. Kevin also has a wonderful sense of humor, and he's a great role model for others."

Submitted by friends
Janie Burgan, PRC Administrative Assistant to R & D
Sandy Kline, PRC Marketing Specialist

Commentary by Kevin Williams
I am Kevin Williams, a 28 year old Web Developer currently living in Charlotte, North Carolina. I relocated from Cleveland, Ohio in 2005 for better weather and job opportunities.

I have been using a PRC device for over 12 years. I migrated from the Liberator with Word Strategy to the Pathfinder with Unity-128. The use of a communication device has been invaluable in my daily life. It allows me to communicate with many different people in situations where I wouldn't be understood otherwise like in the car with friends and family, on public transportation, and places like the local barbershop talking about sports and politics.

I have done presentations at PEC, ISAAC, and ASHA Conferences. I also participated in many other AAC Events over the past few years. Everything started when Bruce Baker of Semantic Compaction Systems picked me out of the registration line of PEC 2000 to be a last minute replacement on a user panel. So blame Bruce for giving me a stage and time to speak my mind about topics, and not to mention creating the technology that enables me to do it so fast. What was he thinking? After that I been terrorizing the AAC community ever since.

Even though the ability to talk in the car without making the driver crash by having them look at my manual word board is undoubtedly a huge life saver for many people on the road, I feel the biggest impact the Pathfinder has made in my life by giving me a method to communicate with complete strangers or people I see on a limited basis. To be successful in gaining my independence in life without my thoughts being filtered or interpreted by a third party at key moments or when I am by myself in a public place. Being able to approach a person and engage with my own personality is invaluable.

I realize that the Pathfinder will never compare to natural speech in displaying my individual persona, and the monotone nature of the digitized voice tends to make people on edge with nervousness trying to understand it for the first few times talking to me. I, like many other good Augmentative Communicators have, adapted and incorporated the dry digitized speech into my personality and adapted to where after engaging in an conversation with me you want to listen to the words coming out the speaker, but yet also they recognize my personality through the sounds, looks, and gestures I make accenting the words spoken by the device. Having the Pathfinder clearly narrate my communication with my unique word choices helps people realize that I'm fully capable of having an intelligible conversation with some patience. I could do it without the assistance of an AAC device, but I would have to rely on people to understand and know more about me before engaging in a conversation. The task of trying to teach every person I could potentially talk to before actually meeting them is to time consuming and would over shadow the point I was trying to convey in the conversation. Using my Pathfinder to communicate and display my personality has helped me build relationships with clients as a freelance web developer.

While conducting my business as a freelance web developer working from my home, I communicate with clients in one of three ways: either through a speakerphone with my Pathfinder, IP-Relay with Instant Messenger, or Instant Messenger by itself. Many of my clients prefer to do business over the phone which presents a barrier for me using a device until the client becomes familiar with being patient in communicating over the phone. That barrier is also dampens confidence in the client of my abilities as a developer, and their belief in the quality of my service. Quick and poignant responses are an essential part conducting business, especially a home base business where you cannot rely on another person to network and retain clients. Having a speech impediment can hurt in the business world where fast talk and big money is the way of life. Compensating for the natural response delay that comes with being an Augmented Communicator, I use saved event messages along with the seamless intertwining use of Minspeak, word prediction, and spelling features that the Pathfinder provides. The device gives me full access to my vocabulary as quickly as possible with minimal planning. I have been able to slowly build trust of my clients not only through my work on single projects, but by how well I can communicate and network with them on future projects. All made possible by having a communication device with the capabilities of the Pathfinder.

I have a variety of interests beyond the realm of programming and business. I like attending theatre performances, movies, and concerts. I enjoy the hobby of being creative through writing, drawing, and music. I participate in a number of adaptive sports like tennis, snow skiing, water skiing, but my favorite sport by far is power soccer. Currently I hold the manager position for my local team, Charlotte Power Surge. Also I started and manage the US Power Soccer mailing list for members of the United States Power Soccer Association can share ideas and discuss many issues arise about the sport. Much like ACOLUG does for the AAC community.

A passion of mine is advocating for the rights and independence of people with disabilities. The passion started after I realized how much I could influence a person's outlook just by expressing my thoughts. Attending and networking at AAC Conferences, and many PRC Ambassador appearances during my college career helped ignite that passion.

As a result of the passion in college, I was one of the founding members of Ability Unlimited, a organization for students with disabilities, which addressed a lot of issues that were outside of the realm of academics at Kent State University where I attended. Also currently I serve on the board of Directors of my local Center for Independent Living and several Community Access Committees in Charlotte where I provide not only my technical expertise, but voice the important opinions of the people the services affect.

I feel that many people with disabilities rely on community services throughout their daily lives to achieve their independence, but very rarely are we involved in the process to determine to what degree the service is accessible to them. By participating in these meetings and voicing my opinions, I try not only to represent myself but also hose who will be affected by the decisions made there. So my Pathfinder in essence not only gives a voice to me, but a whole community of people. In no way do I try to know or declare my opinions and thoughts are that of all people with disabilities, but I feel everyone should speak up and share their opinion even though it may not be popular or it takes fifteen minutes to get out each sentence. Everyone needs to speak up sometime, and that sometime is NOW!

To conclude, My Pathfinder gives me the joy of people actual understanding what I have to say, but it never gets any easier because I always have more to say. My favorite quote sums up my feelings about being an Augmentative Communicator:

"Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak." - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. -- April 4, 1967