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On
the left is Lizzie talking to her Grandmother in Boston - April 18, 1994. She had
just won a Special Olympic Gold Medal in Bowling and wanted to share the news with
everyone. On the right is a portrait of Liz that was unveiled at her memorial services held on July 7, 1994. This is Lizzie's Legacy |
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When SpeciaLink started - it was an avocation - a desire to help a teacher to find resources to allow his students (all of whom had very severe disabling conditions) to participate in class to the best of their ability. Not being able to communicate or move set up some serious barriers, but this teacher was determined to use the state-of-the-art technology available to him (this was 1981 and there wasn't a huge amount available) to enhance the functioning abilities of his students.
Our daughter, Lizzie, was not a student in this teacher's class, but she had been one of his students a year or two before. She could communicate and she could move. She was limited somewhat in coordination, but physically her disABILITIES were minor. She bowled with a unique style and did a great job. She participated in cross-country skiing, she vaulted (acrobatics on horseback), she was a gymnast and a great basketball shooter. Her disABILITY was intellectual in nature. With an IQ of 55-56 , she was labeled most of her life as someone with mental retardation. But, she was a STUDENT, using all of her God-given intelligence to it's fullest.
She had benefited from using the Apple IIe we purchased in 1981. I was a programmer, helping to write the computer programs that collected and analyzed data when a nuclear bomb was detonated at the Nevada Test Site. I felt like a magician of sorts, because I was able to encode instructions that a computer could understand, given direction from physicists and mathematicians, even though I did not understand why my programs did what they did. When computing power became affordable to someone such as myself and my family, I felt I could incorporate my skills and programming knowledge to develop computer programs that Lizzie could use to enhance her thinking skills and help her take better advantage of her learning experiences at school. It worked!! And it was amazing how well she interacted with these small, unassuming programs that put her in a position of total independence.
Due to Lizzie's immediate success with the computer and these simple, custom-made programs, Wally and I became more involved with Mr. Johnson, one extraordinary teacher, who always worked above and beyond the call of duty, extracting and using an much of his students' potential as possible. He was the one with the students who were unable to speak or move in a typical fashion. With Wally's uncanny ability to look at difficult problems and arrive at simpler solutions, we were able to help Mr. Johnson develop some programs that allowed these students to use computers to "speak" for them, through very simple interaction with the computer through the use of switches that could be operated with very limited movement.
Think about how exciting it is to have a child who is unable to communicate to communicate through speech synthesis and to "speak" her mind for the first time.
This is how SpeciaLink began. Providing simple solutions with limited technology to enhance functioning in children.
