Specification of user-configurable communication aids

Individuals with speech impairment can generally benefit from an aid to expressive communication. Technological progress has permitted the specification of sophisticated assistive communication devices, where a principal goal is to embed functional flexibility into the design to allow maximal efficiency and availability in promoting inter-personal communication. This flexibility may be achieved in a number of areas-for example, in the provision of a facility for unconstrained locally-programmable vocabulary specification, in the utilisation of more than one modality for expression, in the design of the user interface, in the monitoring and exploitation of individual-specific operational parameters, and so on. This paper describes a system which is designed to incorporate a high degree of flexibility in each of these areas and demonstrates the role of technology in achieving efficiency, flexibility, and suitability for a range of potential users of the system. It is this last point, achieving the objective of matching of the system characteristics to the end-user characteristics, which may be seen as a principal focus for the exploitation of `high-tech´ solutions in the design of assistive communication devices