A CHARITY which helps severely disabled children communicate has demonstrated some of its technology at an open afternoon.

The ACE Centre, in Windmill Road, Oxford, works with about 90 children each year with a range of communication problems and helps find and develop innovative technology to help them make themselves heard.

Potential donors, partners and dignitaries, along with people who work with disabled children, have been given a tour of the facility and shown how some of the equipment works.

Mark Saville demonstrated how a talking computer, which can be used for controlling various things such as lights and televisions, could be used to control a toy robot. He said: “It has been very busy demonstrating all the technology and the ranges of communication methods that we can offer children, ranging from simple charts which you point to words through to computer equipment controlled by just your eyes or head movement.

“The aim of the day really was just to raise awareness locally of the kind of work that we are doing with children in and around Oxfordshire.

“There is such a low incidence of people who have these really severe disabilities, it is quite difficult to get our voice heard above all the other charities.”

He said the day had been a big success.