iPad Opens World to a Disabled Boy

[onehandle]

OWEN CAIN depends on a respirator and struggles to make even the slightest movements — he has had a debilitating motor-neuron disease since infancy. Owen, 7, does not have the strength to maneuver a computer mouse, but when a nurse propped her boyfriend’s iPad within reach in June, he did something his mother had never seen before. He aimed his left pointer finger at an icon on the screen, touched it — just barely — and opened the application Gravitarium, which plays music as users create landscapes of stars on the screen. Over the years, Owen’s parents had tried several computerized communications contraptions to give him an escape from his disability, but the iPad was the first that worked on the first try.

“We have spent all this time keeping him alive, and now we owe him more than that,” said his mother, Ellen Goldstein, a vice president at the Times Square Alliance business association. “I see his ability to communicate and to learn as a big part of that challenge — not all of it, but a big part of it. And so, that’s my responsibility.”

Since its debut in April, the iPad has become a popular therapeutic tool for people with disabilities of all kinds, though no one keeps track of how many are used this way, and studies are just getting under way to test its effectiveness, which varies widely depending on diagnosis.

A speech pathologist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center uses text-to-speech applications to give patients a voice. Christopher Bulger, a 16-year-old in Chicago who injured his spine in a car accident, used an iPad to surf the Internet during the early stages of his rehabilitation, when his hands were clenched into fists. “It was nice because you progressed from the knuckle to the finger to using more than one knuckle on the screen,” he said. Parents of autistic children are using applications to teach them basic skills, like brushing teeth and communicating better.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/nyregion/31owen.html

[Egnever]

1. They also make your appendages larger i hear

[Beaverhausen]

2. My husband, who is a nurse, uses his iPad with his patient who has MD

it is amazing!

[DirkGently]

3. Apple's changed the world. Again. Apologies to haters 8)

[Odin2005]

4. Very cool!

[tammywammy]

5. That's awesome! n/t

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. I can see it.

Much smaller issue but after I messed back the new pad allowed me to keep working... No cigar with a computer.

And if it worked for me I can definitely see it.

Oh and...3,2,1 for usual suspects...