Hello everyone,
I am Ayub Rustamov, and I am a 17-year-old young man with cerebral palsy. When I was 3 years old, my parents won the green card lottery, and I came to the US with my family. When we got to the US my parents took me to a primary care doctor. The doctor introduced us to the speech department in Kennedy Krieger. The speech department wanted to test me to get an understanding for how much I understood. My family always knew that I understood them. My Mom realized that I tried to communicate with my eyes the day that she held me in her arms. She told the speech therapists that were going to test me, to look at my eyes to understand what I was saying.
After they finished with testing me, they recommended me to a Special school. I started Pre-K. During the years of Pre-K, kindergarten and first grade the school tested me, and they recommended us the tobi and dynovox devices, however they were not easy to use for me. One day, my tobi device broke down and we went to the Assistive technology department at Kennedy Krieger. They showed me the Accent 1400 and I tried it. I was using it so well that everybody was amazed in the room. After a few tests, they sent me home with a loaner device.
When I took it to school the next day, everybody was amazed by how good the device was working for me and then, it was all uphill from there. My grades skyrocketed, I was talking to everybody, and they understood me, and everybody was amazed by how good I was at working with the Accent.
Now, I do all my schoolwork, communication and driving my wheelchair easily thanks to the Accent 1400 device. I am an ambassador for PRC- Saltillo to help them to reach other people in need. There are a lot of people that could benefit from an Accent device but don’t know that it exists. I want to help PRC- Saltillo to grow and help a lot of people to be heard.
