HP TouchSmart PC Helps Autistic Students Communicate

You may have read my cover story back in November about touchscreen technology in schools. Part of the reason that this type of interface is so useful to schools is how it helps special education students use computers much more easily than a keyboard and mouse. And one of the examples on the consumer market I gave in my story was the new HP TouchSmart PC.
Well here we have a fusion of the two: this San Fransisco school's Hope Technology Project is using the TouchSmart--along with an augmentative assistive communications device--to give autistic students the ability to record themselves, select sound clips and form sentences in their own voice. The student in the video, for example, was non-verbal in the 14 years of his life, until this program. Now he can "speak" coherent sentences for the first time. Pretty amazing.