AAC in the Cloud - Highlighted Sessions

The interdisciplinary Assistive Technology team from Blythedale Children’s Hospital will provide information on their holistic AT assessment approach for children with complex medical needs. The importance of both an interdisciplinary approach to evaluations and collaboration will be highlighted for technology integration across settings, and case studies will be presented.

Do you have questions about how to document AAC within the Individualized Education Plan (IEP)? Learn how to address AAC devices and services in the IEP throughout the assessment process and implementation! We will discuss how to account for student needs and school district concerns, goal writing, and how to document all of the vital information efficiently in the IEP.

Understand how to set up and customise combinations of face gestures that a person can use to access Predictable. Recipes are then linked to spoken messages. This opens up access for people with limited movements, who can isolate movements of eyes, mouth or eyebrows.

When it comes to new skills practice is necessary for proficiency. Consent is no different. When supporting students with multiple disabilities and/or complex communication needs, who may not have bodily autonomy, this need is amplified. In this presentation we will discuss how to teach consent across educational settings.

In this session, we’ll discuss the research and design principles that contribute to the creation of a complete language and literacy ecosystem for AAC. We'll talk about the development and use of Core First, our symbol-based communication system. Next we'll address communication partner training and the creation of Pathways, a free companion app that allows you to identify the needs of each AAC user and then establish priorities for engagement and growth. Finally, we learn about how we built the Core First Learning curriculum to leverage language success and literacy development with hundreds of books, activities, and lesson plans.

Storybook reading activities are a natural part of the home and school day for children. By incorporating modeling with augmentative communication into these activities, research repeatedly demonstrates that communication partners can easily impact language skills!

It is easy to agree that all learners should be placed in the Least Restrictive Environment. But sometimes students with complex communication needs are placed in general education classroom without a robust plan for support. Inclusion is not a place, it is a concept and it is not just about physical placement. The goal of general education placement is authentic inclusion, not merely a seat at the table.

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!

All parents teach their children to communicate. Without classes or workshops or the direction of a specialist, moms, dads, and caregivers teach language. Yet, when we look at a young (or older) child who is not able to communicate fully using spoken language we become afraid. We don’t know where to start or what to do. Advice varies and everyone has an opinion. This session will focus on looking at the skills all parents draw upon to teach their children to communication and harnessing those skills to teach your child with complex communication needs.

Special Education Departments continue to be asked to do more with less. Nationwide, districts are faced with less resources, teachers, staff, and time, but are simultaneously tasked with an increase of heterogeneous groups of students, including those with Assistive Technology needs (including AAC needs), and documentation. Communication is a right. How can districts ensure that every students’ AAC needs are being addressed and not being lost in the shuffle? This session will examine how districts and organizations can leverage CoughDrop’s cloud technology to provide personalized AAC services to greater amounts of students. This session will: Overview the CoughDrop Collab Organization and Management Tool and Resources Explore CoughDrop’s remote management options of district licenses and student and staff users from a central dashboard Investigate Universal Design for Learning (UDL) strategies to integrate CoughDrop’s Individual, Classroom, and Site Licensing options into district initiatives Examine CoughDrop’s integrated features for IEP AAC Goal automated tracking and data reports Discuss CoughDrop privacy controls for AAC teams

Remote digital communication can be a valuable resource for AAC users for many reasons. With the sudden shift to remote practice it can be difficult to know how to support communicators from a remote setting, and how to best implement AAC from a distance. Come learn about some of the unique features of CoughDrop like built-in two-way texting, virtual assessments, remote editing and reporting, and screen share helping tools, and how they can help support communicators in various settings.

In this presentation we’ll demonstrate how keyguards improve accessibility for AAC apps, how to choose a case for your device that will best suit a keyguard, and the variety of materials and manufacturing methods available today. We’ll also include a discussion of how to best configure the most popular AAC apps for use with a keyguard.

The ultimate goal of a comprehensive AAC assessment is effective communication. Given the complexity of AAC evaluation, the diversity of those needing assessment and the constraints imposed by time and reimbursement factors, the need for a systematic, comprehensive approach to assessment is critical to the goal of successful AAC use. But how to get there when there are few systematic assessment protocols available? This session reviews the iOS app AAC Evaluation Genie, an informal assessment framework that provides a cohesive protocol for evaluating the skills that are most commonly looked at during an AAC evaluation process.

We know and use alternative access methods for students unable to activate a device with direct selection. But what about our other students? What if we used eye gaze, head, pointing, switch scanning, and partner-assisted scanning for students that have the motor abilities for direct selection?

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.

Augmented communicators discuss the importance of recruiting and paying AAC users as public speakers. Each will offer examples of different public speaking engagements, what they need to be successful, how they prepare, unexpected challenges encountered, what they would do differently, and how they get connected with opportunities.

This session will offer real world experiences using eye gaze to encourage and enhance independent communication and learning skills as an additional method of communication. Through videos, examples, ideas, and resources we will demonstrate how using this method of communication allows the user the ability to participate in games, social media, communication, as well as enhance learning skills in both school and home environments.

To provide inclusive environments we need to consider communication supports, not only on the playground but at local attractions too. This presentation will discuss everything you need to know about community communication boards: where they are, how to develop one, and the impact they can have!

Share experiences in Augmentative and Alternative Communication Online in, spanish identifying strategies, activities and resources that allows keeping and development of communication skills and get lots of connection, interaction and fun, for students and communication partners.

Accommodations, Assessments, Tools, when does a UDL become AT! Where, when and how to add AT and AAC into the IEP? Writing IEP's is exhausting and not knowing if you are doing it right can be stressful. This webinar will, while not the most exciting part of what we do, help you have a better understanding of how to have AT/AAC documented and connected throughout the IEP. In this hour-long webinar, we will look at AT consideration, when UDL becomes AT, and how to ensure the Present Levels, assessments, goals, and accommodations are all connected. Examples of what and how to write goals, AT services and devices will be shared. We will also explore how to ensure your goals do not conflict with private practice goals and discuss testing accommodations for state testing. Learning Objectives: In this webinar participants will be able to... Understand the difference between UDL and AT Describe how and where to write AT/AAC into an IEP State importance of having AT/AAC in the IEP

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.

There has been a recent pivot in the way AAC support is provided due to the need for distance learning. This is an opportunity to evaluate new and traditional strategies to decide what will be continued upon return to in person learning. Let’s allow creativity and innovation to guide implementation.

Many AAC communicators can benefit from the gradual introduction and modeling of a small set of core words for the week or month. Focusing on a set of core words can also help the support team and families have a concrete area of focus. In this session we will discuss the research backing up this educational strategy and introduce the Communication Workshop, a free, open-licensed, community-driven library of books, videos and activities to support core word implementation across multiple device brands and implementations.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, we closed our AAC private practice offices, and we began providing telepractice services to our clients. This presentation will discuss how we accomplished this, share successes and challenges of this service delivery model, tools and strategies we use, and current outcomes. Families’ perspectives will be included.

The are time when “less is more.” AAC is not one of those times! Increasing availability vocabulary on the main page, increases Motor automaticity and reduce key stoke and the time it takes to gereate a novel utterance.

Technology fails. It’s a horrible but very real truth. Other times, technology cannot do as much as we would like (like go for a swim with us). During this presentation, we’ll discuss creating backups of systems (high-tech and paper-based), as well as creative solutions to access language across all environments.

Need help convincing and encouraging communication partners to change how they interact with AAC learners? Tap into Motivational Interviewing: a counseling technique designed to help people discover their own intrinsic motivation to make positive changes in their behavior.

A MASTER PAL, or “skilled partner” of an individual who uses AAC engages in authentic and meaningful interactions. However, developing such skills with communication partners is an on-going, nuanced and gradual process. This session lays out a framework for meaningful team dialogue to identify, describe, and discuss interaction behaviors of exemplar communication partners, in digestible chunks. Model as a MASTER PAL has been implemented in a school-based setting, but the content and structure are relevant across environments where AAC communication partners require support to understand and engage in authentic communicative interactions. Participants will be provided access to and an overview of Model as a MASTER PAL modules on the following topics: Model AAC, Motivate, Accept Multiple Modalities, Statements more than Questions, Time, Engage Naturally, Response Not Required, Presume Competence, Appropriate Prompting, and Let the Child Lead.

Practical ideas to integrate AAC into community-based instruction, empowering individuals to communicate effectively in various real-world settings.

This session explores the uses of tactiles, which are growing as an effective instructional strategy. Tactile representations are used for access to literacy and learning, and as a representation of language in both expressive and receptive communication. Presenters will explore two main teaching considerations supporting integrating the use of tactiles or reviewing their use: (1) What are the properties of tactiles? and (2) How do we use them?

I worked with children who were non-verbal and minimally verbal 20+ years ago. There were so many things I didn't know that I wish I had and many people still don't believe now that I know would have made kids I worked with who had no communication have much more communication.

This session will summarise the origins of The Pragmatics Profile for People who use AAC and will be useful for AAC Practitioners who want to develop their knowledge of this Assessment tool. A case example will be presented where the Profile was used to assist practitioners working in local services.