A 17-year-old teen from Cypress, Texas, created an application to be able to communicate with his little sister who has a rare genetic condition that affects her ability to eat, move and speak.
Della Calder, 14, has Bainbridge-Ropers syndrome and uses a combination of hand signals and short sounds to talk to her family. According to CNN, Archer Calder was frustrated with the augmentative and alternative applications provided to Della and decided to take matters into his own hands. He also said some programs costs hundreds of dollars which can put a financial strain on families.
"She wants to communicate like everybody else. And just imagine how hard it would be if you couldn't communicate by talking to people," Archer said.
Archer created a web-based application called "Freespeech." It allows users to input images of their choice that represent words. All you have to do is click the image of the word you want to say, and the website says it out loud. The app is easily editable, something Archer noticed a lot of other applications lacked.
"Della's interests come and go. We need to be able to add buttons for all the Clarence characters and add all the Addams Family characters and then take them off when she loses interest. These are the things she wants to talk about," Archer and Della's dad, Chad Calder, said of Della's favorite TV shows.
"Freespeech" is free for anyone to use, thanks to Archer. He put the website on GitHub, a code-hosting platform. He has worked with other coders who have helped him implement more add-ons to the app, like a password or the ability to make it accessible offline.