Communication Assistance to Negate Disabilities in Youth (CANDY) is a group of computer scientists, electrical engineers, speech pathologists, pediatricians, and occupational therapists with the ten-year goal of creating a speech synthesizer for disabled individuals. This paper reports on a method, analogous to the acquisition of speech in the normal development process, that uses body movement to drive an articulation system to produce speech.

The authors report that they are at the stage of building systems using a methodology in which body movements of disabled people are applied to drive systems to produce lines and curves in both the plane and space. The paper reports on results that are encouraging them to continue to use the method of articulator-based speech to achieve their goal. The paper is interesting and clear in its presentation of the problem and the issues, including the techniques considered, selected, and used in the method. The presentation of what is happening in the system described, which uses body movement to drive a system to generate lines and curves, is less clear.

The paper is good, and the reader goes away with positive feelings about technology--specifically computers--and people. It also has good references.