After many years of waiting for a device that would be  portable enough to
carry anywhere, and then having to wait for regional center and voc rehab to
work out who is paying for it, I finally got my talking device today!

It is the dec-talk technology that has been around for 15 years,
unfortunately, they did not take advantage of sound  cards like soundblaster
which uses the dec voices, but added many more features that allow greater
control over  the sound and pronunciation.  After all, medi-cal can't be
expected to pay for a fancy machine, can they?  well, if they pay 8,000 for a
wheelchair, i don't see why not a speech machine, but that's another thing.

Even so, some of the voices (there are nine) are very clear, and i do have
the ability to store corrected pronunciations of words i select.  Still
trying to perfect "tamar".   My next try will be tah-mar.  And the nice thing
about the Link, which is what it's called, is that i can plug it in my phone,
and the voice will go over it. or also a p.a. system, or into a speaker.

it can also plug into a computer but only to stream stuff from the link into
a file or email. not the other way around.
they put a very interesting  attachment on my powerchair, it holds a bar that
has an arm that holds the link.  the arm can be raised up, or it can be let
down, or  i can lift the central bar and move it out, away from me. I can
also detach the Link from the arm, and i can take the whole bar out, to
remove the system from my chair, like when i go to art class and don't want
the link to get dirty.  so that part of the engineering is excellent. thanks
to the guy at stanford rehab.  I just wish they'd use a bigger battery so the
batteries would last longer. now it's only about 3 hours.  maybe i will write
the company.

there was an adorable 12 year old young man as we waited for the van going
home, he was nonverbal and had no use of his hands. but he kept grinning at
me, and was flirting with me nonetheless his mom told me he has lots of
ladies he flirts with.  he uses an eyegaze system, where he looks at a
computer screen to pick his words with infrared, and the computer says them
for him. So there's all kinds of devices out there.

love, tamar