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Making Room: What Practical Classroom Support Looks Like
Imagine a ten-year-old being asked to put away a tablet and join the reading circle. They do not move. A teacher's aide repeats the instruction, a little louder and a little slower, as though volume were the missing ingredient. The student still does not move. In another classroom, a teacher...
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The Power of Presuming Competence: A Nonspeaker’s Call to Action
I stop and think about what I went through as a young child all the time. On a scale of 0 to 10, so many of the therapies that overtook my life would get a negative number! It wasn't that the therapists were bad people; it was because the initial premise of the treatments was fatally flawed. How? I...
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Why Message-Passing Tests Are Unethical
Note: The generic term “Spelling” is used here for all methodologies of assisted communication access with spelled or typed output. The term “Spellers” is a generic label accepted by non-speakers who communicate via these methods. “Non-speaker” (preferred over “non-verbal”) includes...
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Advancing the Rights-Based Inclusion of People Who Need and Use AAC: A Guide to Allyship
People often ask CommunicationFIRST for our recommendations for interacting with people who need and use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) tools and supports,1 including nonspeaking autistic people, autistic people who are sometimes able to speak, and people with other...
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More Than Spoken Words: How DSPs Help People Find Their Voice
Everyone has a voice, even if they don't communicate through speech. Expression can take many different forms — from gestures and facial expressions to communication devices, pictures, and written words. When people with developmental disabilities are given the tools, support, and opportunities...
