ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview this unique rehabilitation approach that in only a few decades has provided efficient and inventive ways for many of the most disabled people on the planet to better understand and to be understood. Imagine a world in which its inhabitants are almost motionless or wander aimlessly in restricted, barren spaces unable to express ailments or pain, request assistance, talk about feelings, or simply ask for things they want or need. The inhabitants were adults who aged here or babies and children abandoned by unwitting parents who acquiesced to a prevailing attitude that out-of-sight and out-of-mind was best for their family and society at large. Institutionalization was essentially a life sentence, although no crime had been committed. The technology revolution was the genesis of inventive communication options never before available, and as the technologies expanded in functionality, so too did the feature set that led to the inclusion of more people with extraordinary communication needs.
