AAC in the Cloud 2021 Conference

Dasher is a fluid, continuous gesture text entry system implemented for the first time in an AAC app in Predictable, as an access method. It is accessible via direct touch, as well as head and eye tracking, and features a letter prediction engine.

To many, there's AAC apps for communication, and other devices for everything else. But, we use other apps (on the same device!) for communication, and AAC as non-communication assistive tech. The lines between AAC and everything else are fuzzy. Denying this, and locking us into one app is harmful.

The COVID-19 pandemic shed light on the importance of communication, connection, and community for the AAC community. Lessons learned from the unintentional creation of an AAC community will be shared for members to create their own course of action to empower themselves and others with a connection to AAC.

3D printers create amazing Items supporting multisensory teaching and home made keyguards. Create visual, sensory and tactile cues to exploring and understand the language system. Let’s face it not everybody has a 3-D printer….it’s about partnerships: local high schools, generous engineers, community colleges. Come learn about 3D printing and AAC and see how I came up with novel ways to teach robust language systems to toddlers.

In this fast paced, hands on session participants will explore how to support learners using AAC across content areas related to STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics). By engaging students in motivating content with high interest learning experiences we can provide them with a reason to communicate and lots of the practice that research shows is needed to become proficient with an AAC system. Participants will have the opportunity to develop resources to use with their own learners during a hands-on component of the session, so this is much more than your traditional sit and git!

AAC Anywhere! There may be many barriers to introducing AAC, but distance should not be one of them. This workshop will focus on a current project that demonstrates the effectiveness of remote AAC assessment, intervention, and modeling using tools and techniques we have learned during the pandemic when in-person learning was not possible. Through partnerships with PicSeePal in Australia, the Nika Project in California, and CoughDrop in Utah, we are currently working with teams with different levels of AAC experience in six countries across the globe (India, Peru, Nigeria, UAE, Malaysia, Federated States of Micronesia and Republic of the Marshall Islands). We will be sharing what we've learned -- from methods, to structure, to collaboration, to cost-effective tools (both high and low tech) -- to help guide us all into the new world of providing AAC service globally during these challenging times and beyond.

Smart speakers are a game changer for students who can't interact with the world typically. Students with multiple disabilities can use their AAC devices to control their environments This gives our students with the highest needs the ability to control their worlds, just like their typically developing peers.

Since there is no consolidated baseline or roadmap to designing high-tech AAC systems, in this presentation I want to share our one year AAC redesign story. We design AAC for two languages: English and Turkish, and had the chance to experience each step in developing and designing a high-tech AAC. This includes UX research and design, drawing of the symbol cards, arranging them, developer & admin side like coding for language engines. These insights will benefit with professionals in the AAC design field.

Money, sex, and politics are discussions that don't belong at the dinner table, but they do belong in the speech room. Let's talk about how AAC devices need to be edited and straight-up redesigned to support marginalized AAC users wholly throughout their lives!

Discuss common challenges that eye gaze communicators face in classrooms, brainstorm solutions, and learn about helpful features of the Eyegaze Edge SGD in the preK-12 population. Panelists include parents, SLPs, family members of AAC communicators, and Eyegaze trainers. Bring your questions and challenges to our panel of experts!

Help the presenters create a character who will go on an interactive story-driven adventure. Participants will make choices, guiding actions and outcomes, all while using open-ended questioning, descriptive teaching, and aided language stimulation. Leave having experienced a model for creating an engaging experience to teach and learn language using AAC.

Can incorporating “mindfulness” page sets on an AAC device benefit communicators and their support staff? Join us for a group mindfulness exercise, as seen from the screen of an Eyegaze device and see examples of various mindfulness techniques. Learn how these principles may increase quality of life for AAC communicators.

I primarily use symbol AAC, iday I switch between 5-6 different types of AAC, depending on the situation,I use the internet. Multimodal communication is critical to my active lifestyle, so is cognitive accessibility and screen readers! My active life, multimodal communication, internet use doesn't change that.

As linguistic anthropologists and other scholars have argued, social interaction is the basis of what it means to be human. Yet, the interactional practices of Autistic people who do not speak are understudied and often misunderstood, resulting in claims that they have persistent interactional deficits. Moreover, nonspeaking Autistic multilingual individuals from minoritized language and racial groups in the United States face further marginalization due to deficit-based language ideologies and the groundless but commonly accepted belief that simultaneous acquisition of more than one language can hinder language development. As a result, many nonspeaking Autistic people must use English-dominant augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) devices to support their interactional needs. It is not clear, however, how multilingual users and their families view the role of these technologies in their daily lives. Drawing on in-depth ethnographic interviews of five nonspeaking Autistic multilingual Latinx AAC users and their families, this thesis investigates how participants creatively manage the interactional, linguistic, cultural, and technological limitations and affordances of AAC technologies. Utilizing the concept of “tinkering”, I demonstrate how nonspeakers and their families are problem-solving agents operating under constraint who develop innovative communicative strategies and workarounds that both reshape talk and reimagine family communication in interaction.