October is International AAC* Month:
Highest Performance Communication – Best Life Experience
The following information is taken directly from the website:http://www.aacawareness.org/ and highlights why honoring those who use augmentative alternative communication and the people who support them is so important.
Why is AAC Month important?
•8 to 12 people per 1,000 experience severe communication impairments that require AAC, but many of them do not have access to AAC (ASHA)
•“It appears there may be a serious shortage of knowledgeable professionals capable of assisting families with effective AAC use.” (Niemeijer, Donnellan and Robledo survey)
How will you celebrate? I am going to highlight some of the written work created by my friends using AAC on my website. Also, I am working with some of the schools I consult with to have their AAC speakers recite school news for the building. At the highschool level, we have peers who are helping program and provide opportunity for our students year-round but will highlight some of them in the school paper.
The ISAAC AAC Month task force has some more ideas!
•Work together with people who use AAC to share information, to organize and conduct training and events (festival, fair, seminar, book or poetry reading, Silent Tea or Coffee Break, AAC quiz, communication technology expo)
•Link new AAC users with experienced AAC users for mentoring
•Invite a speaker who uses AAC, arrange a poetry reading or AAC-led singalong
•Host a film on AAC with discussion afterward including people who use AAC
•Sponsor a public reading of the Communication Bill of Rights (and film it to share)
•Plan a Power of Communication Relay and information fair to raise funds for communication devices – See Faye Warren’s video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ati_34FcEAs
•Visit, read, and share the online AAC Writing and Video Collections by people who use AAC to communicate in the “Sharings” at www.aacawareness.org.
•Participate in the 4th Annual 24-Hour AAC Chat on Skype, Facebook and Twitter (date and times to be determined); post, read, share on International AAC Month Facebook page; post, read, share tweets on Twitter (Twitter hashtag #AACchat)
•An invitation to the People Who Use Augmentative and Alternative Communication to submit stories
Contact info@aacawareness.org for more information
* AAC means Augmentative & Alternative Communication – other ways to speak, write and take in information and conversation for people with speech impairments or disabilities – like electronic talking aids, computers, touch screen devices, speech generating devices, boards and books with pictures, words and letters, Talking Mats, Communication Passports, eye-gaze systems, partner-assisted scanning, facilitated communication training, gesture and sign language.
