October 10, 2007

My voice is my power...

This was put together by a tenacious group of teenagers who are much more significantly impaired than Schuyler but who use similar speech devices.

Produced by an AAC advocacy group in the UK called 1 Voice.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is wonderful...awesome...I don't really even have the word that I want to use. More people should see this.

R said...

Glad you liked it, Rob - there are at least 2 young people in that video that are VERY similar to Schuyler, though - it moves so fast that they're easily missed.

Amy Lynn said...

That's really beautiful, Rob. Thanks for posting it.

Anonymous said...

That's awesome. When I was working on my rehab degree, I worked at Denton State School. There was a man with severe CP and mild mental retardation that had been placed at DSS when he was a child - he was in his late 40s when I worked there. He couldn't speak, but had a board on his wheel chair w/commonly used words and the alphabet, so he could have conversations. He had a pointer that he held onto and manually spelled things out. If only he would have had a box! Wow.

Ani said...

Wow! What a powerful statement. Thank you for bringing it to our attention.

Jana said...

That's amazing. Thanks for posting.

Unknown said...

Wow that was great. Watched it twice. Thanks for sharing, Rob. I think the hardest thing for me is being patient and letting the child take time to get their message across. I find myself questioning, at times, if they really understood my question, etc, but often times it is just that I am in too much of a hurry to wait for the answer. Thank you for reminding me to do that.

Unknown said...

Stunning.

Anonymous said...

Thank you Rob!

Anonymous said...

Dangit, you ruined my makeup this morning! I just let the tears fall, trying not to smear my mascara... that was amazingly beautiful. Thanks you for making my day magical. Now I need to go back and start over with the mascara... or maybe for today I will just skip it. Thanks...

Jill

Anonymous said...

That made me fight back tears at work. Very beautiful, but...but kind of devastating. I simply have no idea what it's like to live life with such impairments/disabilities- and to finally have a way to communicate....it's impossible to relate as a person who has always been able to speak and write....yet what I feel is so very strong and almost overwhelming- happiness and grief all messed up together.
Thank you for posting that.

Niksmom said...

Rob, I lurk a lot and somment sporadically. Thanks for this. And for sharing Schuyler with us. You guys keep me strong when I despair over my son's communication (and other) challenges. We are scheduling an AAC evaluation for Nik as soon as possible and hope that he, too, will be able to find his voice.

Jenny said...

Wow, that was wonderful. Thanks for sharing! I am curious: does the BBOW come in accented dialects, too?

CameraDawktor said...

wow, this is really cool.

i temporarily lost my voice this summer. it gave me an interesting perspective.

i realized that my voice is not just my ability to speak.

it was also frustrating and isolating, but made me fiercely value my voice even if i couldn't "talk."

thanks for sharing the video.

Impy the Painter said...

I have a stutter myself, which I understand is nothing compared to what children like Schuyler have to deal with. They're broken much worse than I am. I'm simply cracked.

I found your blog recently and have spent hours going through it. Lately, I've been feeling very frustrated with my own voice, with struggling to get out words. It's funny how I can't say "Chicken" but I can say "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" with no trouble at all. I just restarted therapy and it seems as if my speech has gotten worse.
Whenever my own speech starts giving me problems or when I get frustrated. I'm going to think of Schuyler and those wonderful, smiling happy kids in the video. I have a voice. I can talk, and I'm thankful for that.