Hi Severine!

Do you mind if I pass your message along to the deaf-blind listserv? I'm
sure someone on that list can help you. I am deaf-blind myself and have
been in similar situations to the one you are describing. I would be happy
to give you some suggestions. I'm still reading through my email, but I
will get back to you as soon as possible.

Lisa
[log in to unmask]

At 10:56 AM 4/18/01 -0400, you wrote:
> Hello,
> At my work, there is a new deaf-sighted employee who cannot speak very
> well. Since I'm totally blind and don't know the American Sign Language, I
> find it very hard to communicate with him.Do you know if there exists a
> device on which you can type what you want to say  and have it spoken
> outloud by a speech synthesizer? This way the person could "Talk" to their
> entourage and they could respond by typing back and have the sentence
> appearing on a screen (or Braille Display). Is there such a device and how
> much does it costs? Otherwise, do you have any suggestion on how to ease
> communication? I think he can read on lips but sometimes he doesn't
> understand my accent, I think.
>
> It is paradoxal that this problem arises in this work place, because we are
> a language research Center which attempts to teach language to primates
> (Chimpanzees and Bonobos). The keyboard that the animals are using has
> symbols that look like japanese characters and both the humans and the Apes
> point to those symboles when they want to communicate something. Sedrick,
> the deaf person is now learning the keyboard so we may be able to use that
> as I have a brailled copy of it. But there are only 360 words on it, most
> of which are foods so we won't be able to have very interesting
> conversations if we just use that. I don't really have to communicate with
> Sedrick (we don't work on the same domain), but I find it interesting to
> try.
>         Thanks for your suggestions,
>
>                         Sincerely,
>                         Severine Renard
>
>
> VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
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>
>


VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
To join or leave the list, send a message to
[log in to unmask]  In the body of the message, simply type
"subscribe vicug-l" or "unsubscribe vicug-l" without the quotations.
 VICUG-L is archived on the World Wide Web at
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/vicug-l.html