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 ![[----------------Horizontal Rule----------------]](/webart/hrule.gif){kind=small}  3. How do you say hamburger?Going out to eat can be a very enjoyable experience. But for those of us with speech disabilities, the process of doing this simple thing can be daunting. If you use a wheelchair, just getting to the restaurant can be a royal pain. Is the restaurant accessible? Is the restaurant within wheeling distance? If not, do you have an accessible form of transportation you can use? Can it be summoned immediately, or must you make reservations several days in advance? And finally, once the transportation is at the door, I always wonder, will the lift work? You’re now in the restaurant looking forward to a good meal. Your server hands you a menu and you start looking it over. When you decide on what you want, you must decide whether the generic "hamburger" which is in your speech synthesizer will give your server enough of a clue, or do you really have to type in" double char-broiled Southwestern burger"---that long name they have for meat patties these days? You decide to take the safe route and type in that fancy name, but you must be quick because the server is on his way over to your table." May I take your order, please?" A confused smile flickers across his face as he realizes that you are no mere mortal among the lunchtime crowd. You hit him with your best shot, a synthesized blast, the best the computer has to offer. It doesn’t work. The guy doesn’t understand. He has that blank look on his face mixed in with apprehension. "Could you repeat that, please," he says. You do, with the same result. You’re both sweating now, trying to think of a way out of a desperate situation. Suddenly you grab the menu and start pointing away. Luckily, it has lots of pictures on it and there can be no doubt as to what you want. When your food comes, you try to relax and make something nice out of what has been a very frustrating situation. You leave the restaurant wondering if you will have the courage to come back again another day. But deep down in your heart you know you will because this is your life and you must live it to the fullest. This compilation of events has occurred many times in my life, and I bet you’ve had similar experiences. In a study ponderously titled " Initial comparisons of the efficiency of a variety of AAC systems for ordering meals in fast food restaurants," a group of researchers compared the effectiveness of a non-electronic communication aid with communication devices with speech synthesis. Even though early electronic technology was used, the results are interesting. Experiment One Two experiments were conducted. In the first, a picture communication wallet was compared to a Light Talker13 with Echo speech synthesis. The communication device users were also equipped with a 3" by 5" introduction card which said, "Hi! I don’t talk. I will use this device to place my order." The settings for this first experiment were 56 fast food restaurants in Minnesota. Success was measured by the number of requests for clarification of the order; if the order was not placed within two minutes, the episode was considered a failure. Experiment One showed that people who used picture wallets had better results in getting their orders filled than did the people using Light Talkers. The researchers gave two main reasons for this: The noise in the restaurant was quite loud and the voice quality of the Echo speech synthesizer was rather poor. Some listeners did not know whether to listen to the Light Talker or read its display. Experiment Two Experiment Two took place in Minnesota. It compared a picture wallet to an ALLTALK1, 1 a Real Voice14 with a printer and a Real Voice without a printer. The voice output devices were tweaked beforehand to maximize intelligibility. The researchers also created more detailed introduction cards with exact instructions for the listener. The results of the second experiment indicate that the improved quality of the voice and the use of detailed instruction cards can dramatically improve the efficiency of ordering. Although the picture wallet was still the fastest system, the voice output devices proved to be almost as good. This comes as no surprise to veteran AAC users. A brief written introduction works wonders when you spring an AAC device on somebody for the first time. It really puts people in a listening mood. Try it sometime; you may be amazed by the results. This article appears in AS Volume 1, # 1. You may order this issue by clicking on Ordering Home Page Online Ordering 
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