This article originally appeared in Vol. 1 No. 1 (November, 1992) of the Facilitated Communication Digest, [p. 4].

A number of individuals who use facilitated communication type while they are looking away from the keyboard. This obviously raises questions about the validity of the method. Simply put, observers wonder how the person can type without looking and whether the facilitator might in fact be cuing the person to the letters.

At the Institute we have reviewed the videotapes of over fifty people using facilitated communication, and we have noted that people who type and look away from the keys can only do so when the facilitator is supporting their hand or wrist. When the same people are facilitated with support only at the forearm, elbow or shoulder, they focus on the keyboard more directly.

We have asked people who communicate successfully while they look away from the keyboard how they can do this. They have typed answers like 'I know where the letters are," "I have a picture of the keyboard in my head," or "I look out of the corner of my eye."

Despite these explanations, it does appear that these individuals can continue to type successfully while they look away only if they are given more physical support than they actually need. Those who use peripheral vision are likely to have depth perception problems. Depth perception requires binocular, stereoscopic vision, and individuals who point without looking with both eyes are likely to under- or over-reach their targets, producing errors.

Not all people can type or use communication aids while looking away. Unfortunately, unsuccessful communicators cannot be questioned about the processes operating in their cases. We hypothesize that these individuals have problems with eye-hand coordination, and with visual inhibition needed to keep their eyes on the keyboard or target while they point to it. These individuals often appear to have their eyes "caught' by moving or contrasting stimuli around them, and have difficulty bringing their eyes back to the target without a prompt.

When individuals look away from the keys, dependency on the facilitator is increased, and they may seek cues from their facilitators. If visual skills are not fostered in all settings, development of other functional skills requiring hand-eye coordination and/or visual inhibition will remain problematic. If people rely on the facilitator to monitor the position of their hands and their aids rather than learning to do it themselves then independent aid access will be delayed. Pragmatically, many people will have their confidence in the method undermined by seeing people typing without looking, and will find it harder to believe that the words typed come from the person with communication difficulties.

Do not support individuals when they are looking away. They will never become independent typists if they are given more physical support than they need or are cued by their facilitators or make numerous typographical errors. Facilitators should emphasize from the first session both the importance of looking directly at the keys and that independent typing is a realistic goal.

A number of Australian Facilitated Communication students have attained independence, and while we do not yet have many students here in Syracuse who are independent, we do have many who are able to type only with support at the elbow or shoulder. Becoming independent may take a couple of years, and some people may never become completely independent.

If the person is trying to type while looking away, this indicates that the facilitator needs to remind the person to look. It may also be a sign that the facilitator can fade some of the support.

There are obviously a number of interesting research question involved here. Do people with these disabilities have a better than average ability to recall the image of a keyboard? Do they have a better than average ability to find the location of an object in space when it is out of their sight? Our more immediate problem, however, is to give people with communication problems a means of expressing themselves. If they need to communicate through spelling, it is hard for them to type accurately or become more independent typists unless they focus on the keyboard.