Champion friendly innovation so that the voices of the have-nots are heard loud and clear. The Romper Barreras foundation, in Barcelona, promotes the use of assistive technology to make the lives of people with functional diversity easier, as well as their families and the professionals (educators, health workers, etc.) who surround them. “We believe that all people have the right to be autonomous and to decide about their daily lives taking into account their individual capabilities. We are aware that limitations and barriers exist, but we also believe that, together, we can break them,” says Carlos Villanueva, patron of the entity.
And what is assistive technology? You only need to think about the great scientist Stephen Hawking and how he communicated to understand it at a glance. It is all that innovation (predictive keyboards, communicator with synthetic voice, adapted software, augmentative communication systems, screen reader...) that ensures that people "with some disability, intellectual or physical, can learn, discover the world, work and communicate without limits,” they say. One of the best ways to help the population that needs this technology is through the Romper Barreras awards, which this October reached its tenth edition.
The winner in the individual category was Leo, a 6-year-old boy from Sabadell, who at 11 months was diagnosed with Angelman syndrome, a genetic disorder that causes delayed development, intellectual disability, balance problems and speech. His parents, Óscar San Nicolás and Mónica Saavedra, who have been through more than one medical ordeal, discovered assistive technology when Leo was two years old. “It was a before and after in our lives,” they say. Over time, Leo's communication is increasingly fluid and he has gained autonomy. “He has a portable communicator that he always carries; It is his voice. Then we have the computer with an adapted program. He recognizes the pictograms and constructs sentences, he tells us his feelings, if he is hungry, cold, if he is tired, if he wants to play ball with his brother Nil… He has more and more resources,” points out this feisty couple. They have been trained in these techniques and have paid for the training of Leo's teachers, at the Teresa Claramunt public school in Sabadell. “The teaching team fully supports us and Leo is very integrated. Next year he will go to primary school. “We are very proud,” says the mother.
Since the foundation, the My Voice project has been promoted, which consists of the creation of a bank of children's voices, free to download, so that families with children with speech disabilities can install them on their dynamic communicators, instead of the current voices of adults. “It is important that minors can feel identified with their voice and that it can grow as they do,” Villanueva concludes.
