Speech and Language Therapists assess, diagnose and treat communication difficulties. Here at Speech Matters Speech Therapy we are passionate about helping people with communication difficulties, such as dysarthria, aphasia and apraxia of speech. We support adults with a wide-range of conditions, such as stroke, Parkinson’s disease, traumatic brain injury, learning disability and autism.
One of the ways in which we help people is to implement an Alternative & Augmentative Communication (AAC) system. For people who cannot speak or who find communication extremely difficult, these life saving devices give people a voice. It might be used as their primary means of communication or they can be used as a backup in trickier situations e.g. when feeling tired, when communicating with unfamiliar people or in doctor’s appointments.
AAC refers to lots of different things, including communication books, communication apps and even devices operated via eye gaze or special buttons called “switches”. AAC devices come in a variety of formats. Some have pictures as well as words for people who struggle with reading. Some are “text-to-speech” where the person types in a sentence, such “can I have a cup of tea please” and it says it out loud. Some are eye gaze devices where the person “types” with their eyes – these work by a special camera that tracks eye movements and loads up whatever word or letter they are looking at. Stephen Hawking used a special infrared switch on his glasses to scan through words and letters using his cheek muscles!
An AAC system can even refer to simply using an alphabet board and going through the different parts of the alphabet with people and slowly narrowing it down to single letters to spell words. One of the most famous cases of this being used was the memoir The Diving Bell and the Butterfly written by Jean-Dominique Bauby who wrote it whilst experiencing “locked in” syndrome after a stroke. Baulby blinked to communicate which letters he wanted to select. The book took about 200,000 blinks to write and an average word took approximately two minutes. Check out the book on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Diving-Bell-Butterfly-Jean-Dominique-Bauby/dp/0007139845. It really is a truly inspiring and beautifully written book. The story behind the book has now been made into a film by the same name.
Here at Speech Matters Speech Therapy we help people through their whole AAC journey – from identifying which is the best system, right down to using it in the local café to order your favourite drink. One of the most essential parts of introducing a new AAC system isn’t just selecting the “right” system, but on training the person and their communication partners to truly make it a part of everyday life. As you can imagine, Stephen Hawking took several years to find the right system for him and many more years to truly perfect using it.
For more information and resources on AAC, check out https://acecentre.org.uk/ and https://www.communicationmatters.org.uk/ for loads of free downloadable AAC resources. The ACE centre does require you to sign up, but the resources are all free and of really high quality.
With ever evolving technology, the possibilities for AAC really are endless and I’m excited to see what the future holds for this field. Check out our next blog in a few weeks’ time for our 10 top free AAC apps, resources and websites.
If you feel that we could help an adult with AAC then please do contact us here.
