Noah Trembly will give a speech — but nobody will hear his voice.
He will deliver the Edwin and Esther Prentke Augmentative and Alternative Communication Distinguished Lecture at the Annual Convention of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association in November in Orlando.
Trembly’s cerebral palsy forces him to communicate with a special machine that allows him to move his computer mouse by moving his head.
“Using a small dot on his forehead, Noah is able to look at the screen, select the words he would like to convey, and then speak them through his computer,” said David Hajjar, a doctoral student at Ohio University.
He has been using these sorts of translating devices for almost 25 years — so long, in fact, he serves as an expert in the field as OU’s on-site educator and technology consultant.
Trembly, 37, will write his speech before the ceremony and have the machine read it for the audience. The device also allows him to click on certain words to read and compose emails.
It’s an “augmentative alternative communication” that uses a PRC ECO2, a speech-generating device.
About 1 in 323 children have cerebral palsy and it’s the most common motor disability in childhood, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Working at Ohio University is my first real job, and the respect I receive from my colleagues has been a really good experience,” Trembly said.
Trembly worked alongside John McCarthy, associate director of Communication Sciences and Disorders, during the 2012-13 academic year teaching a graduate class together.
The work was part of a sponsored internship from the Prentke Romich Company with McCarthy that involved individuals with complex communication needs in speech-language pathology student preparation.
Together they presented at a national conference sharing their experiences teaching and working together.
“As Noah and I got to know each other, we got to know what things we could do that worked and that didn’t work,” McCarthy said.
Trembly didn’t win the contest to speak at the Annual Convention of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association last year, but the committee asked him to reapply.
Trembly is considering delivering his speech about being disabled in the workplace, he said, to “hopefully to get more people to introduce disabled people into the workplace.”
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@Rachel_Alley22
