AAC Awareness Month

Happy October! Happy Augmentative and Alternative Communication (ACC) Awareness Month!

How often do you see children or adults using pictures, boards, or tablets to express ideas? Before undergraduate classes I never saw - or cognitively recognized - the use of AAC. Due to my training and career, I’ve had the privilege of working with lots of children who use other methods besides verbalizations to express themselves.

I’ve always been drawn to low-tech AAC: Printing, laminating, and arranging picture symbols. I use Boardmaker with a yearly subscription, a Canon color printer, a Scotch laminator, and Velcro strips. It’s a process of figuring out what’s important for the client to request, refuse, and share by getting input from family and observing the client’s developmental skills. Sometimes low-tech AAC is two large and colorful symbols, sometimes it’s a binder of small written symbols, and usually it’s somewhere in the middle of these two options.

Hi-tech AAC uses technology. Speech-generating devices are acquired through health insurance after an evaluation with a speech therapist and company representative, and are programmed with linguistically-designed grids that can be customized. There are also AAC apps, with my favorite being GoTalk NOW. The options are endless!

If your child can’t communicate their needs and wants with words, then they can benefit from AAC. Research shows that AAC builds all pre-language and language skills, such as joint attention, intentionality, symbolism, vocabulary, and syntax.

So, here’s to the use of pictures, boards, and tablets in homes, schools, restaurants, libraries, parks, museums, and everywhere we go!