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Speech delivered by Wai Kin in 1995

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Information Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference
Information Technology Week
Speech by Wai Kin Chiu Oct. 3,1992

Hello, my name is Wai Kin Chiu. Lay day ho mar? I can't talk to you in Chinese with my light talker anymore because it's easier for me to talk to you in English than Chinese. I brought some of my equipment to Hong Kong and a speech to all of you. I hope all of you will like my speech.

I'll be talking about what I did the last 6 years and some of my equipment and other things. I brought my speech therapist and her son and one teacher to Hong Kong and they will help me this week.

Well, I have CP. I'm 20 years old but I'm still a kid inside of my heart. I come from Seattle, Washington.

I can talk to you with my light talker but you will have to be patient. I use my left knee to send morse code. There are two switches by my left knee. The morse code calls up messages I have stored. I can spell too.

Let me tell all of you about my history and later on I will answer all the questions. I was born in Hong Kong. I came to Seattle on 3-20-83. My first school was Lowell. I did not know much English so I had a very hard year communicating with people. In the summer of "83 I met a speech therapist at my summer school. Her name is Janis Funk. Now she is my god mother and my speech therapist.

We started to work together the next school year at Meany Middle School. The first thing we worked on was how to use scanning on the computer for communication. Believe me, it was very easy to learn. I learned it for 5 days with seeing the computer and I learned it without seeing the computer for a week. I listened to the beats of the scanning. I liked it. In '85 my speech therapist bugged me to change my scanning to morse code. I did not like using it until I got my light talker in '86. The scanning of the light talker is very slow and very hard to use. I could not use it so I decided to use the morse code. I learned morse code in about 5 weeks. Some of the codes were very hard and some of them were very easy for me.

In '87 I learned about Minspeak for 2 weeks until I understood it. In the next school year I started to go to Nathan Hale High School and I still go there. In that year I learned how to write and read English and I'm still learning it.

I know all of you have been wondering why I am back here for today, right? I'm here to talk to all of you about CP and hopefully, it might help you to understand cerebral palsy better and I'll help you to make some new friends with other disabled people later on in this program.

Now, I want to talk about CP and other things, OK? I get startled so easily. It's called the startle reflex. I'm sure everyone with CP has it, and everyone hates it. Do you want to know why? Well, I hate it when it happens because I might hit someone with my arms by accident. It happens when someone walks in front of me from behind or walks around me or when sometimes my muscles pop or when I hear a loud noise. I can't control my arms, my head, my right leg. I can control my left leg, a little bit of my mouth, my left foot. I can write with my left knee.

Of course, I have some adaptive equipment to help me, such as my computer with an adaptive interface, and my switches and others. The technology today is the best for the disabled people in the US and in the United Kingdom. Many of years ago, we didn't have the technology that we needed to communicate. We had a very hard time to communicate with other people. The last 10 years or so we have had computers for some disabled students for school work. Today, many disabled people are using computers everyday at home, at work, and at schools. If we didn't have technology today, the disabled wouldn't be able to work with other people.

I brought a video tape of disabled children.

Welcome to my speech therapist Janis Funk. She will play the tape for you. I'll be back in a few minutes. Janis..

Thanks Mama. She is also my god mother. So, I can't write and talk and go for a walk without the technology and my special equipment. I wrote my speech on a computer, not on my light talker. I can write it on my light talker but I can't edit my speech on my light talker. My speech therapist put my speech for me in the light talker.

Do you know how many people are disabled in the world now? I think about four and a half per cent. I think by the year 2000 the disabled will increase. I only hope people would make more jobs for the disabled to do by the year 2000. The problem is the world doesn't care for the disabled because the equipment they need for jobs is so expensive. Let's hope that I'm wrong about that. The adaptive equipment costs too much money because it is rare.

How many people now have some disabled friends? And how many of you would want some. Any body? I would say that 10% of you would. How many of you are scared of me now? I might look scary to you outside of me but I am still a kid inside of my heart. You might like me if you get to know me better.

I have so many friends who aren't disabled around the globe. I met them on the Modem and at camp. Mostly they are older than me. I always wanted to make friends my age at school, but I was shy and nobody would talk inside of the class and outside. They were scared of me. I didn't know why. I was so mad and I didn't know what to do until this summer. So, I decided to write a speech about CP and go to schools and talk to all of the students.

I'm not shy and mad anymore because I know what to do now and I have the power to talk to all of you.

It's easy to make disabled friends on the modem network. If you don't have one, you can make disabled friends at school or out there anywhere. Just say hi to them. Please try to make some disabled friends. They need some friends like you. You never know, you might learn something from them. That's all I have to say.

Any questions?

I want to thank you for having me here today and thanks to Janis for helping to put my speech in my light talker. And thanks to Barry for helping me this week. I also want to thank Mr. TK Kang and Ms. Lydia Chan for my trip to Hong Kong.