Although Henry Evans is almost entirely
paralyzed, he still communicates using his eyes. Apart from showing his general mood, he has
developed a code in which winking his left eye is a request to scratch an itch, two blinks mean
he is thanking someone, and rolling his eyes upwards means that he is asking for an enhanced
means of communication: his letter board.
The letter board is a rectangle
with the alphabet printed on it in groups of letters. Henrys wife, Jane, holds it up, and he
indicates letters with his eyes to spell out words. Jane calls out the letters to check that she
has them right and is often able to finish his sentences for him. However, the couple has
memorized where the letters are on the board so perfectly that Henry can actually communicate
with Jane in this way even without the board, simply by moving his eyes in the direction where a
particular letter would be if she were holding it.
The other way in which
Henry communicates is using a device called a headtracker, which converts slight movements of
his head into cursor movements on a keyboard. Using this, he can type up to 15 words per minute.
A note at the bottom of the message asks the recipient to forgive its brevity, since it was
typed using Henrys head.
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