Shrinking the Nonverbal Hurdle – An Autism Job Story

Being nonverbal can be a huge hurdle when it comes to employment. But thanks to new technology, those hurdles are shrinking.

One Write, a company that supplies churches with customized envelopes, software and accounting forms, recently developed the Cyrano Communicator, a software application that works with the HP iPAQ Mobile Media Companion. With an embedded HP Photosmart camera, the user can take photos of objects and can even attach prerecorded phases to the photos.

One person benefiting from the Cyrano Communicator is Alyson Brown, 22. Although she doesn’t speak and only reads a few words, she works two mornings a week at a Lexington, Kentucky dental office and will soon be expanding her work week to four mornings.

Using Cyrano Communicator software, coworkers arrange on the screen photographs of Aly doing certain tasks in the order in which they need to be done. In turn, Aly takes photographs of things she wants to point out to her coworkers.

It was because of a suggestion by Ray Schmidt, vice president of One Write, that the Cyrano Communicator was developed. Ray’s son has autism and for years Schmidt had worked with him on the HP iPAQ Pocket PC. However, his son didn’t recognize many of the icons, so Schmidt had to replace them with photographs, a cumbersome task. He suggested One Write incorporate the features he needed into a simple-to-use product.

Now the product is helping Aly and others have more success at work and less dependence on their work coaches.