ISAAC'94:

Improving the communication ability of people with cerebral palsy largely influences the achievable success in many other areas at different life stages. The development of sophisticated low-cost augmentative communication aids is now possible due to recent microelectronics technology, namely in miniaturisation (surface mount technology, complex integrated circuits) and integration density (due to feature size reduction and sophisticated computer- aided design - CAD - tools), which make it possible to design portable devices for this purpose. This paper describes a portable device based on programmable-logic devices (PLD) and large-scale integration (LSI) technology, designed to provide a flexible augmentative communication aid both for small groups and single users.