Elise, a 14 year old with a diagnosis of cerebral palsy, lives in central New Jersey. She attends a nearby special education school. Elise has an engaging smile and she is a very hard worker. Elise faces incredible physical challenges, however, she does not them get in her way of effectively communicating and maneuvering her environment. She controls her wheelchair and her DynaVox using switches mounted in a head array. Thanks to her mom, who consistently “bumped up” her scanning speed each time she reached a high rate of accuracy, Elise is one of the fastest and most accurate scanners you could ever meet.

Elise has been using AAC for many years. She had initially used her DynaVox 2c with a set of topic pages. Many buttons contained full sentences. She used her device to participate in academics and to communicate as home. Shortly after getting her DynaVox 3100, her communication page set contained both her familiar topic pages and a link to the Gateway pages.

In 2002, therapy Elise demonstrated a surge in her expressive language development. The process of combining words to make sentences seemed to have clicked with her. Initially sentences were 3-4 word messages, without any grammatical morphemes. Elise also began using the spelling page both for her spelling words and on her own, attempting to spell words she couldn't find in Gateway.

To help increase the efficiency of her communication, Elise moved up to Gateway 75. With more of the most frequently used words on the MAIN page, she could efficiently make sentences less frequent navigation to other page links. The availability of morphemes has enabled Elise to continue her gains in expressive language. She is now using the present progressive verb tense, past tense and includes articles, prepositions along with adjectives and adverbs in her spontaneous sentences.

Elsie has come a long way in her communication performance. She now has the ability to say what she wants to say, and does so to adults and is improving her ability to communicate with her peers.

Updated: 11/05