Hi all, for the past few months I’ve had so many people with ALS get over the moon excited over this simple use of an SGD and Amazon Echo. A woman with ALS (who loves this) asked me yesterday if I had posted on any professional lists which made me think to post here. This is a video I made for our clinic page and our clinic facebook page (www.facebook.com/ACPCHBoston) but thought I’d share the link in case anyone had not had a chance to try this out. I have a list of synthetic voices it does not respond to, under development and will share.

"Do you know that by creating your language page sets properly, one can control Amazon Alexa - including music, news, environmental controls (lighting control not demonstrated in this video). Alexa does NOT recognize ALL synthetic voices (we are working on a list) AND for novel commands, it is imperative that the word 'Alexa' is stored with a comma afterward because the Echo requires a slight pause between the awake word (Alexa) and the command. Here you see both full pre-stored phrases as well as a novel command created after selecting 'Alexa," (note the comma).”

Video link:

John M. Costello

Director, Augmentative Communication Program and

ALS Augmentative Communication Program

Boston Children's Hospital

781.216.2220

781 216 2252 fax

www.childrenshospital.org/acp

FACEBOOK: www.facebook.org/acpchboston