Our son, Zachary Bryant, is like many 12 year olds. He loves math and science, lunch with his friends, going to school dances and field trips, and going to football games in the fall. He also happens to have athetoid cerebral palsy. Although he uses a power wheelchair and a Pathfinder augmentative communication device, he doesn't miss out on being one of the "regular" kids in 6th grade at Shiloh Middle School in Hampstead, Maryland.
Zach started using augmentative communication at one year of age, when we were loaned an AlphaTalker. He progressed quickly through several different devices, and used a Vanguard for several years. Then, two years ago we realized he needed the largest core vocabulary available - the Pathfinder. Amazingly, in about six months he mastered enough of the vocabulary in Unity® 128 to function pretty well, and at this point he is working to improve his speed and to make sure he knows words in the core that aren't used as often as others.
One of the huge benefits of the Pathfinder is its ability to be used as an access tool for the computer. Prior to getting access through the Pathfinder, Zach used a switch-adapted joystick as a mouse, with his communication device as the keyboard. This proved cumbersome because he kept having to "switch gears" between joystick and device. Plus, the joystick was very tedious when he tried to target the smaller menu bars that the more advanced software uses. Now we are able to program one button to do each function Zach uses in any software program, making computing easier and more fun for him to access.
Because of this new ease of computing, Zach has been able to use some software very effectively in school. He uses a screen reading software called Kurzweil to read text because it means he can stop and start reading at the push of a button, he doesn't need to turn pages, and it helps him track the words across the page by highlighting them as he reads. This software is what he uses to write with, too. That way, he can proofread his own work and hear how it sounds, just like his peers are taught to read their writing out loud. He also uses standard software like MS® Word and PowerPoint® in his classes the same way the other kids are using them. Recently, he did a PowerPoint presentation on jellyfish as part of a large research project in Language Arts. With the Pathfinder as his mouse and keyboard, Zachary is able to do these things independently.
The most powerful thing the Pathfinder has allowed Zachary to do is to communicate complex thoughts, feelings, and questions to the people around him. Because Minspeak® allows Zach to create open ended sentences that don't have to be pre-programmed, and therefore already known to the programmer, he can finally let us in on all the wonderful things his extremely bright mind is thinking. It's something that the speaking world takes for granted, but our family knows is very precious. Zachary says, "I love my Pathfinder because it lets me talk to my friends about football and it helps me use the computer." He knows what's most important to a 12-year-old boy!
This profile is submitted by Zach's mother, Danya Bryant.