My partner is a deaf Chinese male who also suffers from a left-side-slight paralysis. Indeed, he has troubles using his left hand and has a balance problem which is bettered by special shoes. He knows how to read and write in pinyin and in characters; although he sometimes has troubles with complicated characters. His vocabulary is also very simple and basic. But he can still communicate with his limited vocabulary.
He loves his computer so much and enjoys using it to watch movies, tv shows and video games. He knows how to use the computer well and he also knows how to navigate a dictionary (which he uses to look up characters he doesn’t get).
We thought of getting him a drawing pad which he can use to write down what he wants to say to people since he can’t talk and most people can’t sign. Since he has troubles with his left hand, to make using the pad easy, we thought of sticking it to a belt around his waist so that he doesn’t have to pull it out every time (and doesn’t have to use his left hand). We wanted to attach to the tablet a recorder in which we record in Chinese “I am deaf please write down what you want to tell me” for when he wants to let people know of his deafness when speaking to them.
Unfortunately, he’d much rather communicate through his mom and he is not very open to any other technology that can help him communicate with others. He is more comfortable with his mom doing everything for him. We have been trying to find something else that might help him but we still haven’t come up with anything as the only thing he enjoys is the computer (which he knows how to use except when it glitches; which is something we can’t control). We’ve been collecting lists of his games and pictures of him using his computer. But nothing has come out of that yet.