Augcomm User Trouble-Shoots for Prentke Romich Co.

by Anthony Arnold

My name is Anthony Arnold, and I’m from North Dakota. I was born on May 22, 1977. Right before birth, I had a lack of oxygen in my brain, which is needed for normal development. Due to this, I have cerebral palsy, which effects my whole physical body and my speech abilities. I now use a power chair and an augmentative communication device to gain some independence.

Before my speech-language pathologists started me on a communication board, I would either point at a sales flier or to something in my family’s house. I know sometimes my parents got frustrated with me pointing and their having to guess, but I feel it also offered them some encouragement. It helped them realize that I did know something.

From this discovery, my parents went into the rehab clinic to meet with my team and suggested developing a communication board that could be easily understood by anyone trying to communicate with me. It took my parents some time to sell my therapists on this idea. During this time I was also beginning to go to preschool, which helped create some interaction between other children and me. This built more interest in communication board use and led to more communication boards with more symbols.

By the time I reached elementary school I had a communication board with almost 100 symbols on it. I knew more parts of speech than most five-year-olds. I was easily making 10 or more word sentences. This usually frustrated people trying to follow my hand movements (it wasn’t easy to read as fast as I was building a sentence). From watching my progress with communication boards and realizing that there was no more physical room to put 200 or more words on a board, my parents and therapists started researching other methods. At that time, the Prentke Romich Company was just introducing the Touch Talker with Minspeak. Here was a portable device with a computer-generated voice, one of the first available in 1984. It was a wonderful and dependable device, so we decided to rent one for a trial and eventually bought it.

When I first received my Touch Talker, I remember that was the happiest day of my childhood. I finally had a way of communicating without having somebody always there reading my board. During this time I was seen by two speech-language pathologists who were truly dedicated to working with my parents and teachers to build my vocabulary in Minspeak, and to build my interest level for using the device.

I would say that during my early teenage years I began to realize how much my Touch Talker (and then my Liberator) helped me gain independence. I wanted to help others receive what I had already received thanks to many people, including my parents. So I made a career goal of working for the Prentke Romich Company (PRC) or another place where I could use my knowledge and experiences to help.

When I first received my Touch Talker, I remember that was the happiest day of my childhood. I finally had a way of communicating without having somebody always there reading my board. During this time I was seen by two speech-language pathologists who were truly dedicated to working with my parents and teachers to build my vocabulary in Minspeak, and to build my interest level for using the device.

I would say that during my early teenage years I began to realize how much my Touch Talker (and then my Liberator) helped me gain independence. I wanted to help others receive what I had already received thanks to many people, including my parents. So I made a career goal of working for the Prentke Romich Company (PRC) or another place where I could use my knowledge and experiences to help people communicate — mainly because communication helps everybody live a higher quality of life.

In high school, my resource teacher would get frustrated with me for dreaming about working for PRC, so she said, "Stop dreaming, it will never happen." Needless to say, the teacher was wrong. I now realize that her criticism was probably a service to me because she was saying something I didn’t want to hear, and I had to prove her wrong.

I began working for PRC as an Ambassador, traveling to conferences to display the powers of the Liberator (the successor to my TouchTalker) and Minspeak. I still do that today. After seeing the success of the Ambassador program, PRC decided to try to develop the Remote Troubleshooter Program for the Technical Service Department. I answer technical service calls about PRC's augmentative communication devices at night and on weekends when the company is closed. I feel we have had great success with this program. I have been doing it for three years now, and I love it!

I recently commissioned a painting of all of my communication boards – from my first pointing board to my third and most sophisticated computerized device, the Pathfinder – and presented the painting to Barry Romich, founder of Prentke Romich Company, and two of my speech therapists at a ceremony in Grand Forks. Excerpts from my speech follow:

"I want to welcome and thank every one of you who came for this very special event for my family and me. I would like to introduce one of my bosses and also a great friend of mine, Barry Romich, one of the co-founders of the Prentke Romich Company. Barry is one of the fathers of the Augmentative and Alternative Communication field.

"Barry, what I’m going to present you with tonight is something I believe is well fitting not for only you, not only for the Prentke Romich Company, but for the whole augmentative communication field that has benefited thousands of people with speech disabilities and I’m sure a lot more in the future. This is something you must be very proud of, remembering where we have come from and realizing where we are now today as a field. I know I’m happy myself and I know it will only get better.

"In my lifetime, I have been very fortunate to have found some of the best speech-language pathologists a person can have. Besides thanking the man who built me these devices, I also want to thank the two speech-language pathologists who were so dedicated in teaching me how to use my first one, the Touch Talker, which I got at age 7. To me, these two ladies should be looked upon as leaders of the Communication Disorders Field; they have earned it by their hard work and dedication to their clients.

"One of the things I most like about this painting is that it shows that communication development doesn’t just happen over night, which is a common mistake made by parents, teachers and therapists. I received my first communication board with six pictures on it at the age of two, I have been told. Now I’m 25, using the most advanced communication device we have available today, and within the 23 years, I have used a number of communication boards and three voice output communication devices.

"Ever since Day One of my life I have had great parents, great doctors, great teachers, and outstanding therapists. They’re my team, they’re going to be my friends forever, and they are a part of who I am today. They’re the ones who saw to it that I had educational opportunities, a well fitting wheelchair, and most importantly, some way to communicate with other people. My hope is to not only thank all of you, but to show other people, especially parents with children with disabilities, the possibilities their children have to have a great life even with whatever kind of a disability they have."

Upon accepting the painting, Barry Romich added, "These things don’t happen if there are missing spokes in the wheel." This statement expresses my thoughts exactly.

I highly recommend ACOLUG (Augmentative Communication OnLine Users Group) LISTSERV created to exchange ideas, information and experiences on augmentative communication by people from all over the world. By using e-mail, people who use augmentative communication and their friends and families discuss issues related to augmentative communication, such as equipment, funding, learning techniques and supports.

The website is http://www.temple.edu/instituteondisabilities/ACOLUG/tacolug.html  

To subscribe to the ACOLUG listserv, follow these simple steps:

• send an e-mail to listserv@listserv.temple.edu;

• leave the subject blank; in the message type:

• subscribe acolug [your name] (example: subscribe acolug alice smith);

• send your message;

• when your receive a message under the subject Command Confirmation Request, reply with the typed message OK.

Anthony has created a website, and he welcomes visitors. View his website at www.anthonyarnold.net

Much of the information in this article was provided by the Prentke Romich Company through their "Profiles of Success" at www.prentrom.com.

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