Maggie Worthen, 22, suffered a brain stem stroke a week before her graduation from college and was unable to move or speak. Maggie's doctors diagnosed her as being in a persistent vegetative state. But Maggie's mother kept looking for a way to get through to her daughter, Fox News reports.

Maggie was able to move one eye, and over time it became clear that her mind was intact, but she was essentially trapped inside her body. Using an expensive eye-tracking system, Maggie was able to communicate rudimentarily. But the system was complicated and required a lot of adjustments to work properly, said Maggie's mother, Nancy Worthen.

Then, Maggie and her mom met Dan Bacher. Bacher is the founder and executive director of the SpeakYourMind Foundation, a nonprofit in Providence, R.I., that develops low-cost technologies to restore communication to people who lack the ability due to stroke, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease), brain injury or other problems.

Maggie started working with SpeakYourMind in July 2013. Bacher and his team developed a prototype eye-tracking tool called "SYMeyes" consisting of a webcam mounted on a pair of what Bacher calls "hipster" glasses, with custom-made software that allows Maggie to answer yes or no questions by moving her eye. The eye-tracker system cost about $30. Comparable systems on the market run about $10,000 to $15,000, Bacher said.

Another SpeakYourMind participant, Aaron Loder, 52, has ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease, a progressive disease that causes degeneration of the nerve cells and spinal cord.

Aaron's classmate Maureen Delaney went to visit him in the rehab hospital where he was living, and what she found shocked her. Aaron was on a respirator with a feeding tube, and completely unable to communicate. He didn't have any family to advocate for him either, Delaney said.

In October 2013, Delaney read an article about SpeakYourMind in the local newspaper, and got in touch with Bacher. Now, SpeakYourMind is developing a version of the eye-tracking glasses to allow Aaron to communicate and control a computer so that he can use Facebook to connect with his friends again.