I’ve got a brand-new government-funded iPad and it’s currently collecting dust

One-size-fits-all solutions sometimes lead to unanticipated outcomes.

Here it is.

If you are not a Medium member, you can read this story for free here.

A few months ago, I learned that I qualified for a brand-spanking-new iPad with a complementary purchase of an AAC app of my choice. The program that made this all possible is an obscure local initiative called CALIF (an initiative so obscure, Google can’t even help me figure out what it stands for), which is tucked away in a nondescript brown building in Downtown Los Angeles and does some stuff with the Department of Rehabilitation (DOR) that still isn’t fully clear to me. Going through with the application process which landed this expensive hunk of metal in my possession was certainly not an obvious choice for a person like me, who started speaking at the age of nine months and quickly earned a reputation for being a “little professor” and prolific sufferer of “diarrhea of the mouth”.

The situation began after I had repeatedly told my Coordinated Life Services worker (a Regional Center service I got funding for that basically does what it sounds like) about the anxiety I experience talking to strangers on the phone and how it makes me put off important phone calls for up to…