Facilitating conversation for non-speaking people with multiple handicaps

The quality of life for people of normal intelligence who are physically handicapped and lack speech would be greatly enhanced by the possibility of engaging in ordinary conversation. Although communication aids using computer systems have been developed with, for example, single switch input, conversational rate is generally restricted to between two and ten words per minute. Such long output delays make it impossible to maintain the flow of conversation which, almost regardless of content, is a socially crucial aspect of casual conversation. A recently developed microcomputer system called CHAT (conversation helped by automatic talk), achieves a considerably faster rate for the relatively ritualized parts of conversation such as greetings, small-talk, and wrap-up and farewell sequences.