Italian research on computers and the physically handicapped

Many categories of handicapped people experience serious difficulties in communicating. Among these are the deaf, whose language development is retarded primarily on account of poor speech control, the deaf-blind, whose only means of communication is touch, and the motor disabled, who often lack speech control and/or the ability to make the movements required to write or type. These disabilities, often associated with neuropsychiatric disorders, negatively affect the learning and the socialization processes of handicapped children. The advent and ever-growing power of personal computers (PCs) has opened up new opportunities in providing tools through which the disabled can vastly improve their communication capabilities. This paper describes some of these developments in Italy.