Communication methods for people with extremely limited articulation

I've just watched _The Diving Bell and the Butterfly_ (excellent
movie), and following some links, found a French locked-in syndrome
association.

They have some information about "communication without language"
(only in French, though you can try your luck with an online
translator):
http://alis-asso.fr/e_upload/pdf/communiquer_2008.pdf
http://alis-asso.fr/ewb_pages/c/communiquer_sans_parole.php

This reminds me of something I wanted to do last year, as I have a
similar problem, albeit rarely.

There are times when I have been unable to speak or control my body in
anything more than very crude ways. A couple times, during atonic
seizures, I essentially had the exact same condition as the person in
the film - I could blink, and later grunt, but no more.

More frequently, I find myself merely unable to speak; that's not too
bad though, since I'm moderately fluent in American Sign Language, and
I've always ensured my partners learned some.

It seems to me that the methods described in the flyer (and portrayed
in the film) are both extremely cumbersome and don't adequately take
advantage of all the articulators that a person with LIS (or seizure)
may have. (E.g.: one can blink in patterns, have length be
significant, grunt softly, grunt loudly, etc. A good system would need
to abstract this somehow and accommodate some range of articulation
channels.)

Thus, this seems to be a good candidate for medically beneficial conlanging.

Have any of you experienced this? Do you know of resources that give
the current state of the art for communication in similar situations?

Would you be interested in collaborating on creating a better system?

- Sai

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