With several holidays approaching, interacting and communicating with friends and family is on many people’s mind. Stephen Cronin recently shared a useful alteration he has made to his communication device that can be a game changer for in person conversations during this holiday season.
In hopes of minimizing the hovering and to better share and interact with others, Stephen attached a secondary screen to the back of his communication device. By using a virtual desktop, the secondary screen mirrors the screen Stephen is interacting with. This provides a number of benefits:
- It enables others to understand and “see” how Stephen is communicating. This is especially important to those who do not communicate with Stephen on a regular basis, like extended family, friends, and new nurses.
- It allows others to know when he is typing, so that they understand that they should slow/pause the conversation and wait for Stephen’s response.
- It enables the communication partners to stand in front of Stephen and look at him, instead of standing behind him and looking over his shoulder.
- It minimizes those “awkward” goodbyes that don’t give Stephen the time to respond.
Finally, an interesting by-product of using a virtual desktop is that the additional screen can also control the Stephen’s computer, so if someone is needed to help reset something, in-put a difficult password, or otherwise help navigate the device, this can be done from a position in which the person assisting can be looking at Stephen and not over his shoulder.
Stephen has put together a guide that you can follow if you would like to learn more about this system or read instructions on how you can set this up.
