“Owen, 7, does not have the strength to maneuver a computer mouse, but when a nurse propped her boyfriend’s iPad within reach in June, he did something his mother had never seen before,” Hager reports. “He aimed his left pointer finger at an icon on the screen, touched it — just barely — and opened the application Gravitarium, which plays music as users create landscapes of stars on the screen.”
Hager reports, “Over the years, Owen’s parents had tried several computerized communications contraptions to give him an escape from his disability, but the iPad was the first that worked on the first try. ‘We have spent all this time keeping him alive, and now we owe him more than that,’ said his mother, Ellen Goldstein, a vice president at the Times Square Alliance business association.”
“When Owen was about 8 weeks old, his mother noticed his right arm drooping. It led to a crushing diagnosis: the motor-neuron disease known as spinal muscular atrophy Type 1. A 2003 New York Times article about spinal muscular atrophy said his parents had been told Owen would be ‘paralyzed for his life, which doctors predicted would last no more than about two years,'” Hager reports. “Owen will turn 8 on Nov. 11. While his condition is not expected to worsen, he is extremely sensitive to infection and once nearly died of pneumonia; three specialized therapists and a nurse help keep him alive.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Joe J.” and “Lynn W.” for the heads up.]