In a nonspeaking or unreliably speaking person the communication is running off the rails, and the need to get back on the rails overrides everything else. I am a person who has unreliable speech, which means my ability to communicate with my mouth without a letterboard or an ipad, tablet, or other keyboard device is severely impaired, which is a source of deep frustration and disappointment. It makes me appear unintelligent when I am unable to answer a question or initiate a remark. It causes me deep, deep, deep despair to be continually misjudged because of my limited speech. In typing my words, which means pointing to letters one at a time, I am able to see the words in my head, and I have learned to say them, each one, out loud. It is a painstaking process, but it is my only way to communicate and show the true person that I am inside. It is a way that I am able to be truly myself. If I was not allowed to do this pointing to letters, how would I ever be me and have the life I do?

If I am intelligent inside, then I am able to learn, to plan, to dream, to have hope for the future, and a life that is worth living as best I can be.

Making the opportunity for someone to learn a skill like pointing at letters is going to be a normal occurrence some day, and it will seem foolish and cruel that we did not make more space for this before.
I am twenty years old, and I have been typing since I was five years old. It was a gift that opened my world to other people when Lisa, my Occupational Therapist at the hospital, first helped me to use a keyboard. I am going to say it was like someone opened the door of a room in which I was locked.

My mission now is to help change the perception of people who struggle to communicate reliably with their speech.

We are in here.

We have something to say.  We need you to risk hoping enough to give us a chance.

Make the choice for hope.

Matt