Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate an idea of producing an assistive and augmentative communication (AAC) tool that uses natural human computer interfacing to accommodate the disabilities of children with cerebral palsy (CP) and assist them in their daily communication. Design/methodology/approach: The authors developed a prototype that recognizes the real time detected emotions display on the face and send alerts to the caretakers through Short Messaging System (SMS) or loud speaker. Findings: The evaluation result shows that the proposed prototype recognizes real time facial expressions from the children with CP with an average of 79.4 per cent, and a maximum of 88.3 per cent (standard deviation of 7.4 per cent) on ten children with CP. Evaluations were also conducted to investigate the effectiveness of the prototype to deliver critical expression messages to their caretakers. The result showed that 98.5 per cent of SMS was sent successfully to the caretakers (pre-defined mobile phone number) with an average waiting time of 8.3 seconds. Originality/value: The paper demonstrates the potential of the proposed prototype to assist children with CP to communicate with their caretakers in real time. (Contains 14 figures and 5 tables.)