Meet Lisa

Lisa leads a busy life as a mother, fashion designer and advocate for people with communication disabilities. She lost her verbal speech after having a stroke when she was thirteen, and now uses a text-to-speech app on her iPad and her phone.

Lisa said she rejected speech generating devices for many years because she didn’t want to sound robotic – but newer technologies and more realistic voices won her over.

I’d probably put communication as the number one human right and human need.

She says communities and businesses should become more accessible for people with communication disability, building awareness and allowing more time, understanding and flexibility to support people’s different communication and interaction needs.

We are currently working on getting the communication access symbol internationally recognized, just like the wheelchair symbol means physical access.

Read more about the communication access symbol and about Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) systems including speech generating devices.

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