Technology helping disabled youth find their voice

According to Janice Light, a professor of communication sciences and disorders at Penn State, more than 2 million Americans are unable to use speech to communicate. Obviously a significant portion of these Americans are children. New laptops that combine features from childrens toys as well as new technologies are helping children learn to communcate and learn at an accelerated rate. This seems to be a realm where Human Computer Interaction techniques can really pay off. Though these new technologies are making strides, some feel that they have not yet reached their potential due to the fact that it is adults who are creating them.
Proffesor Light explains:
"The design of many of these systems is really based on how adults think, and the machines are complicated and children take years learning how to use them. As a result, the children miss several years of a crucial learning period and fall further behind normal children. Due to their impoverished learning environment, they're really locked in, in a way." A key factor Light acknowledges in designing for special needs children is fun. Light notes, "The kids talk about that as they build their inventions. They say things like 'it has to have smile power', they like a lot of bright colors, and want to laugh, and make burping sounds." Isn't that really what we all want? The goal is to take a child's experiences and represent it interactively through digital photos of the child, the family, or storybook cartoons. Much like the way we design website for adults, the aim is to have technologies that we can set in front of the children and they can immediate understand how to use it. Imagine that.