-- For Immediate Release --

New Resource means New Opportunities
for Many People with Disabilities who Rely on AAC

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The AAC Institute is a not-for-profit 501c3 charitable organization dedicated to the most effective communication for people who rely on AAC. The AAC Institute web site www.aacinstitute.org has been updated recently with additional valuable resources for AAC professionals and also for people who rely on AAC, their families, and friends.

Improved methods, tools, services, and evidence are available to support AAC evidence-based clinical practice. The web site home page lists many of these and other resources available. Use of these resources is improving the communication performance and the corresponding life achievement of people who rely on AAC.

 

Action Steps:

1. Visit the AAC Institute web site www.aacinstitute.org. A few minutes browsing the site will result in an awareness of the various resources available.
   
   
2. Read the papers. Two papers, available under The Goal of AAC, address general issues regarding AAC Assessment and AAC Evidence-Based Clinical Practice. The site also has many other papers that relate to AAC. Most are in the areas on Evidence to Support Practice and Methods and Tools to Support Practice.
   
   
3. Question everything. Many AAC service providers and consumers are not yet aware of or using the new methods, tools, and evidence. Please help to spread the word by alerting all interested parties to this new resource.
   
   
4. Review all people who rely on AAC. For many people who rely on AAC, communication rate and the ability to say exactly what is wanted are very important. For many parents, providing AAC strategies that foster language development is very important. New evidence shows the performance differences among the various methods used in AAC systems. Just one example from the cumulative evidence indicates that spelling and word predication are slower than other methods of language generation. Simply changing methods could make communication two to six times as fast for some individuals. Evaluate the evidence for each indivdual.
   
   
5. Tell others. Feel free to copy and forward this announcement to others who are interested in AAC. An .html version is on the AAC Institute web site under AAC INSTITUTE INFORMATION / News Release.

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