Electronic Speech Enhancement, Inc., of St. Louis, Missouri, recently announced a new way to help people who do not speak clearly and/or loudly enough. A patent-pending new product, the Speech Enhancer, actually clarifies speech electronically, helping people with speech challenges to be understood.

The device clarifies speech, and works even with very soft voice levels, including people on a ventilator or trach. Funding assistance is available from insurance, schools, vocational rehabilitation, the Veterans Administration and even Medicaid, which may pay all or part of the cost of the Speech Enhancer.

The device is lightweight, battery powered, and simple to use. The person talks into the special microphone and their voice comes out instantly, sounding like them, except clearer. Although the Speech Enhancer won't make a person sound like a television announcer, it does enable them to be better understood, especially by strangers. This ability to communicate with a stranger is often the door to opportunity -- jobs, schools, and more independent living situations.

A special microphone makes the instrument usable in noisy places such as playgrounds, classrooms, churches, banks, and the workplace. Ordinary microphones and amplifiers are unsuccessful at this, but the microphone used in the Speech Enhancer handles this challenge. The device has been field tested for three years and is in use at the Mayo Clinic and other hospitals and rehabilitation clinics in the United States and Canada.

Donna Jordan, Electronic Speech Enhancement, Inc., 1115 Ridge Road, St. Louis, Missouri 63021 +1 314 394-0770; Fax +1 314 394-9442; http://www.speechenhancer.com

As published in the VHL Family Forum 5:1, March 1997. For permission to reprint, please contact VHL Family Alliance, editor@vhl.org. Further information is available from the VHL Family Alliance, info@vhl.org.