July 29, 2016

This is the story of my son Kevin and his new found ability to communicate. Kevin is almost 19 now. When he was 2 weeks old he contracted meningitis and suffered severe brain damage. His brain damage is classified as cerebral palsy with spastic quadriplegia. This brain injury has left him with the inability to speak and communicate. Over a year ago I came across a video on Facebook on the EagleEyes system by the Opportunity Foundation of America. I went to their website and watched many of their videos. Up until this point, we had no reliable communication system for Kevin. We tried other systems like Dynavox, but had no luck. Kevin also has nystagmus of his eyes. This causes twitch like movements of his eyes. When his eyes would twitch the Dynavox system would get confused and constantly reset itself. This led to frustration for my son. We thought the EagleEyes system might work as it tracks the electrical signal of the eyes and nystagmus is not an issue.

A little over a year ago, we contacted the staff at the Opportunity Foundation of America. We decided to purchase the unit and have their trainer Ron Williams travel to our home to train us on the unit and its set up. Ron the trainer was phenomenal! It is a user friendly device, but it helped us greatly to actually have someone come out and set it up and train us on it. This way we were able to ask lots of questions and troubleshoot issues.

EagleEyes is the FIRST device that has allowed our son to communicate. We knew that he understood cause and effect but his disabilities had kept him from communicating with us beyond facial expressions and a few vocal sounds. We weren’t sure how he would do at first when we hooked him up. Initially it was a little slow going. There is an alien game he likes to play. Ten aliens will appear separately on the screen. If they are not gazed upon, they will go away and another one appears. When Kevin first started to play this game, he was only able to shoot down maybe two of them before they timed out. Now, he can destroy all of the aliens in record time. His best time is all destroyed within 7 seconds! That’s amazing! He has also done well at learning and mastering the other applications available to him on this system.

The EagleEyes system also allows us to program choices for him. He can pick out people, activities, animals, colors, etc. The choices are only limited to what we program. We have worked with his school to purchase an EagleEye system also! We had all of those who are involved with his instruction witness his efforts on the system at our home. They were impressed. Now we can use similar activities at home and school that reinforce and complement each other.

EagleEyes has made the difference in the life of a child who otherwise was unable to communicate with those around him. It has been life changing! We speak to others often of our fantastic results with this system and highly encourage others with conditions similar to Kevin to look into it.

Thank you so very much,
Judy, Kevin’s Mom