Inventor Helps Children With Special Needs

For the first nine years of his life, Brent Weir has been trapped by his own body.

Deprived of sufficient oxygen at birth, which severely damaged the parts of his brain controlling his limbs and speech, Brent has spent most of his life in a wheelchair, his only communication with the outside world being smiles and screams and cries.

But because of the electronic and computer wizardry of R.J. Cooper, an inventor and computer programmer who volunteers his time at R.H. Dana Exceptional Needs Facility, Brent and others like him at the school are now enjoying a degree of independent movement and communication.

Cooper, who uses the school as a lab for inventions that he can market elsewhere, has developed computer programs, electronic communication devices and even an electric car that severely disabled children can operate.

“This is the best of both worlds for the school and myself,” said Cooper, a 38-year-old Dana Point resident. “The school and the children get a lot of programs and equipment that they couldn’t otherwise afford and I get to get ideas and see how they work.”

Terri Mullen, principal of the 125-student Capistrano Unified School District facility for physically and mentally disabled children under the age of 12, said Cooper’s work has been a godsend for her school.

“R.J. has provided for children who cannot communicate or learn normally ways that they can communicate or learn,” Mullen said. “R.J. makes our program accessible to kids who are usually difficult to reach.”

Cooper had a cheery and breezy manner as he walked through the facility one recent morning, tousling the hair of almost every child he passed. A volunteer at the school since 1986, he has free access to the classrooms.

It is his educational computer programs for disabled children, most inspired by children at R.H. Dana, that take most of Cooper’s time.

“The problem with most of the computer programs commercially available, even those designed for special education, is that there might not be one out there that is suitable for a particular child,” Mullen said. “The program might expect the child to answer too quickly or the scenes might flash across the screen too fast and the child isn’t quick enough to respond.”

Cooper takes the child aside and tries to find out what his or her limitations are, as well as the child’s strengths.

“I’ll write a program, bring it to school, try it on the child, rush home to my computer, make some revisions, bring it back, rush home again and keep repeating that until we’ve got it right, working closely with the school psychologist to see what is going on inside as well as outside the child,” Cooper said.

One challenge, he said, was finding a program that would stimulate a 9-year-old who was born missing part of his brain. While almost normal physically, the boy has the intelligence of a toddler.

“He really doesn’t do much of anything,” Mullen said. “He gets fed, he walks a little, he rides his bike a little. We needed to find something he would understand.”

So Cooper began working with the boy.

“I noticed he has full use of his hands and that if I put a big red button in front of him he would operate it,” Cooper said. “Then I noticed he likes sounds and big, bold graphics. So after six months, I came up with a build-a-scene program he can operate.”

When Cooper entered the boy’s class, the dark-eyed, blondish lad was lying on his back on the floor slowly shaking a maraca. But when he saw Cooper activate the computer, he quickly crawled over to Cooper and stood up in front of the video screen.

When a scene depicting a blue, green and red kitchen appeared, he started slapping a large red button with his right hand. With each slap, a new item would appear in the kitchen--a toaster, a piece of bread, a monster made of purple jelly.

“He knows that if he presses his big, red button, something new will happen and that he is controlling it,” Cooper said. “Now, this might not seem like much to the lay person, but for (the boy) this is one of the first times he is interacting with his environment and he knows why things are happening. Now we just have to figure out what the next step is.”

Cooper began designing devices for handicapped children almost by accident. A computer nut who was originally an electrical engineering major at the University of Utah, he left that field of study after three years.

Changing his major to developmental psychology, Cooper was attending a 1983 seminar at the university’s medical center when he was asked if it would be possible to devise a computer program to aid a classmate paralyzed in a cliff-diving accident. He agreed to write the program, which was a success, and was soon asked to write others.

“People would come to me with ideas and based on those requests I would try to turn them into reality,” Cooper said. “I found I was able to combine my abilities in computers, engineering and psychology in a unique way.”

Soon, he started his own company to market his programs. In 1986 he moved to Dana Point and, learning that he lived near the R.H. Dana facility, went there to volunteer his services.

“He walked in the door and said, ‘Hi, I’m R.J. Cooper,’ and I looked at him and said, ‘Don’t we buy our computer programs from you?’ ” recounted Linda Puckett, a speech pathologist at the school.

Over the years at the school, Cooper has found it hardest to find programs and devices to help children such as Brent, who have both limited movement and communication skills.

To help Brent communicate, Cooper recently adapted a small cassette tape player using its stereo capabilities. A tape loop is inserted in the player. Recorded on one channel of the tape are “yes” answers; on the other channel are “no” answers.

Two wires run from the player and are connected to buttons. One button is attached to the left side of the brace supporting Brent’s head, the other to the right side. When Brent is asked a question--for example “Are you in pain?”--he answers by pressing his head on the left button to activate the speaker that is playing “yes,” and on the right button to activate the speaker playing “no.”

“Before, the only way to know what was going on with Brent was to guess, because there was no definite way to get a yes or no answer,” said Terri Weir, his mother. “Say if you thought he wanted to get out of his wheelchair, you could start to pick him up and if he started fussing that meant he wanted to stay or if he smiled that meant he wanted to get out, but that was only a guess.”

One of Cooper’s latest inventions is the CooperCar, an adaptation of a child’s electronic dune buggy that he has begun to market nationally. About 3 feet long and 3 feet high, the six-wheeled buggy costs about $300. The kit to modify the car is another $495.

Buttons are attached to the car’s headrest in a manner similar to the yes/no device. A child pushes a button behind his head to accelerate and turn left and right. Wires run from the car to a joy stick that is carried by a parent or other monitor walking alongside, allowing them to override the child’s directions.

Cooper and Mullen see the device as a step in getting a child ready for an electric wheelchair.

“An electronic wheelchair can cost upward of $10,000, so it’s important that a child be ready to use one before one is purchased,” Cooper said.

Leaning his chin forward and then throwing his head backward into the headrest, Brent had the CooperCar speeding across the playground one recent morning. Two able-bodied fourth-graders from neighboring R.H. Dana Elementary School, taking turns as Brent’s monitor, were forced to trot alongside to keep up.

“On the first day R.J. finished the CooperCar, he brought it to our house and put Brent in it,” said Terri Weir. “Brent drove it all the way around the cul de sac again and again. He really likes it and he can’t wait to get in it.”

“A lot of the (able-bodied) children have started coming up to him and talking to him because they think the car is cool,” his mother said, adding that before this, Brent had little interaction with children other than family and classmates.

“Somebody was watching Brent on the playground with the other children last week and she told me something kinda neat,” Cooper said. “She said this is probably the first time Brent has been asked about an ability he has rather than his disability.”