I've worked in this field of assistive technology for 15 years now and know that Stephen Hawking used a software title called EZ Keys that wasn't developed by Intel, but a company called Words+. The software was promoted by him as well and retailed at between £900 and £1,400 for the speech enabled version.
Anyway, EZ Keys became unavailable a few years ago and it was probably this that drove the need for Stephen to need Intel's help as he also used their hardware to run the EZ Keys software. The new open source software is pretty much an exact copy of EZ Keys, however, much of the non-speech side is disabled.
There are other software titles available that do a much better and comprehensible job than EZ Keys or its' new incarnation. Yes, they cost around £360, but they are superior and even though I believe having a voice is a human right, having companies charge this money enables them to put a lot of on-going development into their products and thus provide a quality product for a much needed section of society.
I would also like to add that if people were to provide open source, high quality communication products, then that would be ideal, but to date, they haven't.
I've worked in this field of assistive technology for 15 years now and know that Stephen Hawking used a software title called EZ Keys that wasn't developed by Intel, but a company called Words+. The software was promoted by him as well and retailed at between £900 and £1,400 for the speech enabled version.
Anyway, EZ Keys became unavailable a few years ago and it was probably this that drove the need for Stephen to need Intel's help as he also used their hardware to run the EZ Keys software. The new open source software is pretty much an exact copy of EZ Keys, however, much of the non-speech side is disabled.
There are other software titles available that do a much better and comprehensible job than EZ Keys or its' new incarnation. Yes, they cost around £360, but they are superior and even though I believe having a voice is a human right, having companies charge this money enables them to put a lot of on-going development into their products and thus provide a quality product for a much needed section of society.
I would also like to add that if people were to provide open source, high quality communication products, then that would be ideal, but to date, they haven't.