Come chat about alternative and augmentative communication with a speech language pathologist from MAC Midwest.
AAC stands for augmentative and alternative forms of communication. It is defined as any communication that does not use verbal speech. Most people who use AAC have some sort of communication communication difficulties. AAC supports diversity in communication attempts and improves ability to communicate.
There are quite a few myths out there about AAC. In reality there are no prerequisite skills for aac. The third myth that I try very hard to debunk is that AAC will inhibit spoken language. Not true at all. In fact, AAC helps promote language development.
There are four types of AAC. Low tech, midtech, high tech and high tech. You don't need any technological component to communicate. If anybody has any questions about aac, the process of obtaining an AAC system, feel free to put it in the chat.
All right, so some other things to think about when making the decision of obtaining AAC for either your child or someone else. You want to look at their long term communication needs. Are there any barriers to introducing this form of supplemental or replacement communication system?
Okay, I think we are live. It's Giovanna from Minnesota Autism Center Midwest here to talk to you all about aac. First things first, let's talk about what AAC is. AAC stands for augmentative and alternative forms of communication and is defined as, as any communication that does not use verbal speech. So sometimes we think that only people with communication difficulties utilize aac, but that is not the case. Actually we all use AAC in our daily lives, whether that's texting, writing, emails, using gestures and facial expressions to communicate, sharing memes, my favorite form of aac.
And it's just a way to enhance our ability to communicate for a variety of purposes. And it allows us to communicate in many different environments with a variety of communication partners. So why would we use aac? So most people who use AAC have some sort of communication communication difficulties and this has limited their ability to express themselves. So AAC provides children and adults with the ability to access communication so that they can make requests to get their wants and needs met, to protest.
So to tell people that they don't like what is happening, to tell people to stop. AAC allows people to make comments. So I like that. This is fun, this is great. Comments like that really help build social closeness and helps with people share joy amongst one another, which is such a powerful way that we can utilize language. Additionally, AAC can be used to ask questions, greet others and participate in social routines like expressing love to one another, saying good morning, good night and things like that.
So the benefits of AAC is that it helps facilitate that language development through visual representations, just speaking from an autism standpoint, many people with autism have difficulties with processing auditory stimuli, so they have difficulties processing that verbal language. And AAC allows opportunity to have a visual to go along with it. AAC supports diversity in communication attempts and improves ability to communicate for a variety of purposes. Again, going beyond just requesting it helps protesting, developing that social closeness, developing that social motivation that is really critical for further development of language skills.
Now there are quite a few myths out there about AAC and I just want to spend a little bit of time debunking those myths. So the first myth is that there are a set of prerequisite skills that are needed before you can use robust high tech aac, which means something like a speech generating device. When in reality there are no prerequisite skills for aac. You can build these foundational skills with the device. The second myth is that there is a hierarchy of introducing AAC that starts with a lower tech system and moving to a higher tech system.
And again, this is not true because a child does not need to prove that they can utilize a lower tech device or a no tech system before moving to a high tech device. In fact, if you think that way, you might actually be hindering their progress in developing their communication. All right. And then the third myth that I try very hard to debunk is that AAC will inhibit spoken language. Not true at all. In fact, AAC helps promote language development and facilitates spoken language. Many children with autism display echolalia, which means they repeat things that they hear and then utilize those chunks of language to make their wants and needs known.
And so using AAC gives them a natural functional verbal model that they can then utilize throughout their day to day life. So I talked a little bit about low tech, high tech and so I think it's only right that I kind of explain what each of those means. So I think of three main types of AAC automatically, but actually there's four types. The first is no tech, which is things like contact gestures, which is like a kid grabbing your hand and walking you to what exactly they want. Distal gestures, which is a point usually could be like pointing to what they want or could be reaching for the item that they want.
Another type of gesture is a representational gesture. So waving hello, shaking your head yes or no, thumbs out, maybe sticking your tongue out for that's yucky. There's iconic gestures which reference a shape or action. So arms out like an airplane, hopping like a bunny, flapping arms like a bird. Those are examples of iconic gestures. There's also beat gestures which that's like dancing and clapping to a beat. So those are examples of no tech aac. Another example would be sign language. Again, you don't need any sort of technological component or anything more than your body to support your communication.
The next level would be light tech. So this is things like picture symbols, maybe those single picture cards that are used in the fixture exchange communication system. It could be a communication board which is just a sheet or a board that has a few picture symbols. It could be a communication book, so a binder or a laminated book or something similar that has multiple pages with picture symbols. And then midtech is, I wish I had an example to show you. Is similar to a picture or a communication board.
So there's buttons, but when you touch them there is a voice output. And it's more functional in ways than that light that than that low tech version because the communication partner doesn't need to be right there to receive the message. And then last is our high tech device. So again, it's those speech generating devices typically look like iPads and they come downloaded with a vocabulary set that allows for the person to have access to a robust language system so that they can communicate for a variety of functions and needs.
And yeah, that's high tech in a nutshell. See? Yeah, I think we have a few minutes left. So if anybody has any questions about aac, the process of obtaining an AAC system, feel free to put it in the chat. All right, so some other things to think about when making the decision of obtaining AAC for either your child or someone else that you know, you really want to think about their current communication skills. So how are they able to communicate at this time? Can they successfully communicate for a variety of purposes?
Can they communicate across a variety of contexts? You want to look at their long term communication needs. Do they have a language disorder that may persist and cause lifelong difficulties with communication? Or is this more of an acute short term thing? And you also want to consider family mindset and individual factors. So is the individual or family open to introducing aac? Are there any barriers to introducing this form of supplemental or replacement communication system? So yes. All right, well, thank you so much for joining this chat to answer some of those frequently asked questions about augmentative and alternative communication.
It's been a joy and I hope you have a great day.
