During my HNC, we had to make a six-week internship in order to validate our first year. I did mine at the APF, which is an association that helps disabled people. There I met an engineer, who was a volunteer, who gave me a project. In the association, there was a man called Manuel, that could not talk at all. In order to communicate with us, he had a plasticized sheet with common words. He could move his hand to show us words on this sheet, and that was the only way he could communicate with us. It was a bit complicated for him and for us, so the idea of the project was born. I had to make an embedded system that he would fix onto his wheelchair so he could communicate with us in a more comfortable and efficient way.

In order to accomplish this, I bought an Arduino programmable board, with a small screen. Manuel could only move his hands, so, in order for him to interact with the system, I bought a large and easy to press button. I was working on this project with the engineer that gave it to me. Our first idea was to print on the screen the most used letters in the French language, which are "ESARIN" and then Manuel could choose one and a list of words would appear one by one on the screen. We did not choose this solution because a lot of words would have been unavailable. We also thought about a multidirectional pad to speed things up a bit, but it would have been too complicated for Manuel to use.

In the end, the solution we chose was to have half of the alphabet written on the screen, wait for five seconds, and have the other half, and so on. And with each button press, the semi-alphabet would be cut in half again, and with another press again, until one letter was left. When that was the case, the most common words Manuel was using that were beginning with the selected letter were showing up on the screen. He could select one, and then the whole process began again.

Unfortunately, six weeks go by very fast. The project was working as a prototype, with unsoldered elements and still powered by a computer and not an external battery. I could not test with Manuel if it had suited him. I really hope someone took some time to finish the project after I was gone.