Finally, we have a cell phone based Communication Aid

Been a long time between posts; time that has been spent trying to find the ideal platform to use for our Touchspeak flagship. I did not realize there were so many phones. We did in the end choose two and the HTC Dopod is the first.
We chose it because it's 5" screen is huge for a cell phone screen.


This is the type of communication system that can easily be designed on your PC and painlessly transferred to the device. Choosing the number of rows and columns is easy and keys can be resized on the fly. The bar on the right is a navigation bar. The top key takes the user back to the home page; the up arrow moves the user up one level.

TouchSpeak on the PDA/Phone

A non-vocal person using a TouchSpeak enabled cell phone can make phone call and talk on the phone using his computer generated voice.

The communication system can be picture based using any of the standard symbol systems or text based with word prediction. One could even write on the screen with a stylus and the written text with be converted to speech and spoken to your listener whether that person is standing next to you or on the other end of a phone line.

Rambling

There are lots of neat things happening at GTB and I am hoping this blog will help me keep track of what is happening and where we are going.
First, some background. The Great Talking Box Company manufacture Augmentative Communication Devices; computer based products that talk for people unable to generate speech themselves.
Our latest project is a series of Touchspeak enabled products. TouchSpeak is software that converts a PDA base Cellphone into a speech device that allows the user to talk to the person next to him just like any other communication devices but, in addition, allows the user to make phone calls and talk on the phone using his computer generated voice.