Morgan is a young boy who I met in the spring of 2007. He has autism which has a huge impact on his ability to communicate and interact with people. When I met Morgan, he was quite animated but as he was not able to speak he primarily communicated with sign and gestures. Not that he limited himself to these means. If needed, he would walk to retrieve items, lead people by the hand, or anything he could think of to get his point across. I was struck by Morgan's sense of humour and how hard he worked to try to communicate, but even his dedicated parents could not always understand what he wanted.

After I met Morgan, his parents and I began to explore the possibility of a portable dynamic display device. We ended up trialling several different devices that would let Morgan carry all the symbols he needed to communicate with people who do not know his signs. Following several equipment trials, we identified the iChat communication device as the best option for Morgan.

We patiently waited several months while Enable reprioritized the funding applications they had received. Finally, in August the iChat was funded and in Morgan's hands.

It has been really exciting to see how Morgan, his family and his school have embraced the iChat communication device. His teacher quickly learned how the equipment worked and began thinking about how Morgan could use it to communicate and participate throughout the school day. His parents have really taken to programming the iChat and figuring out how to make it part of their everyday lives. Morgan has been using it to travel on the bus, to buy ice creams, and to ask his fellow classmates if he could help them. He even used his iChat to ask his parents if they could put up the Christmas Tree!

Shannon Hennig
Speech-Language Therapist