The Right Touch

Photograph by Nannette Bedway

After his father was diagnosed with a neuromuscular disease that makes it difficult to speak and move, Charles E. Studebaker found magnetic letters that could be nudged into position on a white board so that his parents could communicate.

His father died in 1977, but Mr. Studebaker, then a computer-systems analyst, didn’t stop thinking about the communications problems facing the disabled. In 1988, he started Enhanced Life Styles Training Facility, in Plain City, Ohio.

Mr. Studebaker helps people to overcome physical impediments to communication by finding a way for them to interact with a computer. His inventions rely on such everyday items as peanut cans and squeeze bottles to create an extension to a computer mouse that a disabled person can manipulate with the wrinkle of a forehead, the touch of a tongue, or the shifting of an eyeball.

Enhanced Life Styles runs on a $30,000 annual budget, with contributions primarily from individuals. The organization is raising money to build a $50-million facility in which disabled people, after leaving the hospital, would learn ways to set up their lives for maximum success at home.

“I’m trying to give them back their self-worth and dignity,” Mr. Studebaker says, “so society doesn’t lose what they have to offer.”

Mr. Studebaker hopes to interest corporations, foundations, and wealthy donors in the project, in part by using a computer-animated CD presentation that is being created partially with a $25,000 grant from United Parcel Service of America, where he works part time.

Here, Mr. Studebaker works with Loine Backulich, who has Lou Gehrig’s disease. Enhanced Life Styles created a way for her to compose letters and articles on her computer by activating its mouse buttons by squeezing a plastic bottle that fits the contour of her hand.