How Presumed Competence and AAC opened doors

What is it like to be autistic and non-speaking in a world that has already made up its mind about you? https://thisisnotaboutme.film/learn/

Jordyn Zimmerman was described as being “aggressive” and “low functioning”. This is a story of hope and how meeting a team of educators who believed in her and provided her a voice through Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) gave her the opportunity to succeed. Jordyn has a Bachelor’s degree in Education and is now pursuing a Master’s degree.

AAC Awareness Month

October is AAC Awareness Month.

Sometimes, a person may not have sufficient verbal speech to fulfill their communication needs. AAC can help to support the person’s message. AAC can also help the person to develop language and communication skills.

Sometimes, a person may not have verbal speech, and may require an alternate means to communicate. AAC can serve as the alternative communication.

AAC or Augmentative and Alternative Communication is a means for people to communicate beyond the use of verbal speech. This can be done through signs and gestures (unaided) or through the use of communication books or communication programmes within tablets and computers.

Aim for Success

I was reminded of this while writing progress reports. We need to aim for success and to look for signs of success while using AAC or when doing any language work.

The aim for any communication is to build relationships. This is the same when we communicate with our spouse, when we communicate with our friends, and when we communicate with people we just meet. When the aim is anything else, the communication becomes weird.

This is the same for using AAC. Our aim is to build relationships first, then we can focus on other things. When we aim to build relationships, we can see success. We can see

  • Increased Attention to Interactions
  • Increased initiation of communication
  • The use of more vocabulary
  • Longer interactions
  • The use of more communication tools/pages
  • Greater enjoyment of interactions
  • More independence in communication.

Click to access Pathways_SCF_Look_for_Success_v1-1_en-US_WEB.pdf

Both parties will want to interact more as they are enjoying themselves.

This will then encourage us to build stronger relationships and to model, model, model. When your aim is a stronger relationship, you will create a positive communication environment.