This morning I came across this article on facilitated communication. This is a technique where people help severely disabled people to communicate, for example by holding their hands as they point to a letter-board. The thing is, as the article points out, there is sometimes difficulty in establishing whether it is actually the disabled person talking. I am in two minds about this: it might well be that such communication is sometimes a mirage, and the facilitator, consciously or unconsciously, is the one producing the words. But if we say that, and condemn the technique, we automatically deny some severely disabled people the chance to communicate. Anyway, go read.