Entry for May 26, 2006 - `Extreme Makeover' tackles disabilities: `Extreme Makeover' tackles disabilities

Home of family with deaf, blind members gets high-tech gadgetry

MARTHA MCKAY
Knight Ridder/Tribune

BERGENFIELD, N.J. - Most everything about the ABC reality show "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" is spectacle, and the TV show's encampment in Bergenfield is no exception.

Roads are closed, corporate sponsors have hospitality tents, celebrities show up and neighbors gawk at the small army of blue-shirted contractors turning one disadvantaged family's modest house into a well-designed home.

On Monday, scores of companies donating gadgetry and computer systems for the family arrived to display their wares half a block from the house.

The Llanes family includes a blind father, a mother with cancer, a blind grandmother, two daughters who are going blind and a deaf son.

Along with demolishing and rebuilding the home's interior, the companies will pack the home with $100,000 worth of the latest technology designed to help people with vision and hearing problems.

"This house will have every piece of technology in it that we know exists on the planet Earth to help a family with disabilities," said Brian Stolar, president and CEO of developer Pinnacle, which is handling the 24-hour-a-day building effort.

The array of high-tech assistance that the Llanes family will find on its return includes everything from the NoteTeller 2, a gadget that lets a blind person distinguish denominations of paper money up to $100, to the PVO, a 4-inch portable color magnifier that enlarges an image from six to 12 times.

Microsoft donated gadgets including alarm clocks that vibrate and smoke detectors that use strobe lights along with sound to alert people of a fire.

The house will have the latest solar panels from BP Solar and the latest home-control software from Home Automated Living of Maryland. A member of the Llanes family will be able to speak into a phone or microphone and tell the system, for example, to turn out the lights or raise the thermostat.

Victor Llanes, the blind father, will be able to communicate with his deaf son, Zeb, 16, using a software program called iCommunicator, which converts text to sign language.

Family members will receive Blackberry handheld devices from GoAmerica that will allow them to type a message to an operator, and then place a phone call.

People who can hear "take cell phones for granted," said GoAmerica sales manager Christina Harper.

The family also will receive high-speed Internet access from Verizon, computers from HP and a Braille printer that punches raised dots on paper.

They'll receive a small black gadget with a laser that can tell a person with vision problems the color of their clothes. And a global positioning system that can tell them what street they are walking down.

The show airs on ABC this summer. No date has been set.