AAC in the Cloud - Highlighted Sessions

Society is built around mouthwords. People claim to care about our futures, but everyone’s entire focus is on vocal speech. There’s little to no communication accessibility. This needs to change. To improve the lives of non-speaking people, we need a society that includes us. We need a communication accessible world!

Session by Rachel Madel about using telepractice for AAC

This presentation will discuss barriers AAC users face in accessing health care and what AAC professionals and supporters can do to address them. It will cover the importance of autonomy and self-determination in health care for AAC users from the perspective of an AAC user in public health.

The purpose of this presentation is to show specific strategies to teach AAC to people with ASD at different moments of their life, making emphasis in the importance of using highly motivating activities to create significant learning. Also to transmit that an approach focused on the strengths more than in the deficits can helps develop communication skills with AAC.

Many schools refer their students to a clinic to procure a personal SGD through the consumer's. The referring SLPs have a wide variety of comfort levels with AAC and need varying levels of support. This is an overview of how the clinic can work with the schools to support the school, the family and the AAC user to maximize the consumer's communicative potential.

Occupational Therapists love thinking outside the box! We will discuss when to involve an OT on your team as well as hidden benefits of doing so. Resources to share with your current teams will be provided to support your thinking outside a typical team and help your AAC users succeed!

Both parents and professionals spend a lot of time and energy on word lists, funding devices, laminating, and coming up with the activities to practice using AAC. What if some changes early on could make that work even more impactful? Join us as we reflect on one of the principles that are foundational to our work: our mindset & the mindset of those we work with. We will discuss the challenges that come along with self-reflection as educators shift towards being influencers rather than experts. Throughout this presentation, we will share resources to help teams consider their role in AAC learning.

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.

Although on the surface, apps appear to be the easy choice due to cost, availability, and ubiquity of tablets/phones, care should be taken when evaluating for an individual. This session discusses app advantages/disadvantages and how to consider apps for an individual with complex communication needs.

We discuss the case study of a clients AAC journey with complex access requirements. How Mike’s physical skill development lead to the use of bespoke systems and the progression from switch scanning to learning morse code. One of the challenges? How do you teach morse code auditorily?

Kelly will set the stage for Dads of AAC communicators to Share 5 tips about AAC that they think that everyone should know. Their tips will cover their children of a variety of ages and use of different AAC systems. Please join us to get this valuable information for your family and child's staff. You may want to share a few tips of your own!

This session will discuss components of the AAC system and how to use the system to support implementation for the AAC users in your life. Information provided in this session is based on research and experience in clinical practice with individuals and teams using AAC as well as system design experience.

Successful communication depends on the skills of all partners. Knowing how to support AAC-users is challenging for many partners. In fact, without explicit instruction, partners are less likely to provide communication turn opportunities. This presentation will explore multiple research-based communication strategies to make you a WISE partner (Wait, Interpret, Show, & Expand).

Executive functioning (EF) skills are critical to using one’s information and skills. This presentation will look at AAC through an executive functioning lens, connecting areas of challenge in EF skills with challenges that many users of AAC face. It will also provide evidence-based strategies to enhance executive functioning skills for users of AAC.

Discover how to create effective AAC teams to help achieve communication goals for AAC users. This presentation shares practical strategies for team collaboration, communication partner training, and helpful tools to empower AAC users and their families to build a cohesive support team which can evolve with the AAC user.

When people talk about AAC they usually think about iPad programs and letterboards. There are however, many more options for AAC, including things that are often overlooked as communication. Let’s look at the wider idea of communication and how it happens.

Curious what sets CoughDrop apart from all the other AAC apps and devices out there? Come find out how CoughDrop leverages the cloud and team-based tools, data, and reports to make strengthen every member of the AAC team.

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.

An overview of low tech communication, including some of the reasons why people use low tech. We will demonstrate different physical access methods: • Pointing by hand • Pointing with a laser (head mounted or handheld) • Eye Gaze • Scanning • Gestures

For children who write via non-traditional modalities, family and staff often miss the emerging steps of scribbling and drawing. Join Kelly to learn how to encourage your students with complex learning needs go through the beginning stages of putting ideas to print through activities, strategies and technologies.

We talk a lot about the importance of training in AAC, but are only starting to talk about how to do that training. With years of teaching AAC to pre-service and in-service SLPs and teachers, Vicki has become a firm believer in hands on activities and she will share some here.

Learn about OpenAAC, a new initiative to help break down barriers for AAC users around the world! This session will be hosted in the Slack chat channel, we will do a short introduction video session and move to chat.

Co-VidSpeak is a new, AAC-oriented web conferencing app. We originally created it for ventilated individuals in a hospital setting, and are expanding its use to support remote communication for any users who could benefit from AAC. Come learn what Co-VidSpeak does, share feedback on features you'd like to see, and learn how you can try it out for yourself!

The Communication Technology Education Center (CTEC) is creating a lively video series specifically for support teams of individuals who have complex communication needs. The STAR series of short videos is for people of any age, using high tech to light tech AAC. The entertaining video scenarios illustrate evidence-based training and support strategies for increasing meaningful communication.