Spinal cord injury causes dramatic changes in a person's ability to function physically, sexually, and vocationally in society. With proper rehabilitation, many paraplegics and some quadriplegics are able to live and function with a high degree of independence. Those with higher levels of paralysis (C-5 and above) currently must depend on family, medical personnel, and a variety of assistive devices to accomplish the most basic activities of daily living. This proposal addresses the use of automatic speech recognition to enhance the use of the telephone by quadriplegics. Simple access to the telephone system is likely insufficient, this, it is also proposed to examine the use of the same system to maintain verbal notes, allowing the quadriplegic to access these notes as a non-paralyzed individual would access written notes. Additionally, the need for other environmental control (e.g. lighting, security) will be assessed for future work.
