To play devil's advocate, her right to speech is also societally-manufactured. Without our social expectation that we should use technology to make the world accessible to people with disabilities, she would have had to get by without a voice. Even the ADA is a relatively recent addition, at the expense of a lot of architectural freedom (like the necessity of designing around ramps and elevators).

The nature of patents leads to situations like this pretty frequently in medical technology, with the iPad app seeming analogous to generic drugs. Should we let the patents run their course and make assistive iPad apps eligible for insurance coverage? Limit the patent terms in cases like this? Abolish software patents altogether? There are a lot of arguable positions on IP, but issues like this one make it far more personal than most.