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Augmentative and Alternative Communication
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Individuals with severe speech or language problems use augmentative and alternative communication to supplement or replace speech. It includes a pattern of communication other than oral communication used to express thoughts, needs, and desires. Some augmentative aids that individuals use are picture and communication boards and electronic devices. This helps them increase social interaction, school performance, and self-worth.
The International Society for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (ISAAC) and RESNA are organizations that aid individuals with technology needs to help enhance their communication. The ISAAC organization's purpose is to help improve the lives of children and adults who suffer from complex communication needs. Its mission is to promote the best possible communication needs to people who suffer severe communication problems. Its goal is to provide worldwide awareness about how AAC aides help individuals without speech. It’s a non-governmental organization which was formed during the year of 1983. Its members consist of individuals who use AAC, their families, and other people like doctors, therapists, researchers, and organizations that make communication aids. The second organization which is RESNA stands for Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North Atlantic. This organization's mission is to maximize the health and welfare of people with disabilities through technology. It is a non-profitable organization that was developed by engineers and students attending the Inter-Agency Conference on Rehabilitation Engineering. It was formed on August 1979 and it is dedicated to those involved in rehabilitation engineering. This organization helps design and develop technological solutions to problems encountered by people who have disabilities in functional areas like mobility, communication, hearing, vision, and cognition. These inventions help them live independently and integrate into society.
Two websites where you can purchase products for assistive communication technology are http://www.speechgeneratingdevices.com and http://www.dynavoxtech.com/products. The DynaVox Maestro was created for people who are unable to express their needs and opinions using speech, gestures, or body language. Its aim is to provide better communication as well as to help enhance language and literacy development and function. Another, product that aids in communication is the DynaVox Eyemax. The purpose of this product is to help individuals who can’t use touch or switching scanning communicate their needs through eye movement. It also helps individuals in the ALS, Parkinson’s, and MS populations. The ChatPC-4 product was designed to help individuals who mainly use symbols for communication. This product strengthens vocabulary and spelling by using symbols and pictures, and it displays synthesized and digitized speech output.
In the introduction, the author has done a good job engaging the audience with emotions, and painting a vivid scene of the seals being slaughtered. This essay does a good job of acknowledging the other point of views. This essay also has a good, clear sense of structure. The author has a strong thesis statement, that gave a clear indication of what the following paragraphs are about.
There are many everyday devises that we hearing people take for granted, among these are telephones, smoke alarms, doorbells, and alarm clocks. When we look at how members of the deaf community use these everyday items we must consider that members within the community have very different communication needs, abilities, and preferences. Hard-of-hearing people for example can use a standard telephone with the addition of a headset or amplifier, while some hard-of-hearing people may prefer a TTY deaf persons rely on it, or a relay service to communicate as we (hearing people) would on a telephone.
Have you ever felt stuck? Wherever you are, it’s the absolute last place you want to be. In the book Into the Wild, Chris McCandless feels stuck just like the average everyday person may feel. Chris finds his escape plan to the situation and feels he will free himself by going off to the wild. I agree with the author that Chris McCandless wasn’t a crazy person, a sociopath, or an outcast because he got along with many people very well, but he did seem somewhat incompetent, even though he survived for quite some time.
Furthermore, this documentary changed several ideas in my mind about these people who cannot communicate and speak. Before I see this video, I did not think that they can communicate as normal people. I thought that they can only speak and answer easy questions. However, this documentary showed me that these individuals with AAC devices can live, work, and communicate normally. They have the chance to achieve many goals in their lives better than normal individuals. The AAC systems do not just allow them to speak and meet their basic needs. However, these AAC systems affect their educations, financial, and professions. I also realized that they have an important role in their societies as normal people. Furthermore, I believe that the professionals such as Bruce Baker, Katya Hill and Barry Romich who contributed in making the AAC systems are genius. They created something for individuals who have communication disabilities to allow them to function as normal people. They gave them the way to communicate and live the normal
Specific Purpose: To help people to understand what Audism is and that the lack of an ability to hear does not mean they are incapable of performing tasks.
Individuals who are deaf or are hearing impaired are faced with many problems in today’s world. There are so many tasks and activities that are done today that deaf or hearing impaired people may have difficulty doing because of there handicap. There handicap used to stop them or inhibit them from doing something that they are interested in or there friends and neighbors would do. However in today there are new and different technologies, that help the deaf and hearing impaired in the activities in which they want to participate in which is hard for them to take part in because of there handicap. Technology is used to help with everyday tasks in the lives of deaf and hearing impaired individuals. With out this new technology which is being invented everyday, deaf and hearing impaired people may be considered to have a handicap which prevents them from certain activities, but this is not the case anymore, now these people just have different obstacles which through the use of technology they are learning to over come. They can do anything that regular normal range of hearing individuals can do, due to the new technology being invented everyday.
National Institute of Health. (2011). National Institute on Deafness and other communication disorders: Improving the lives of people who have communication disorders. National Institute on
...eaches to answer questions; for example place a question and the student answers with a picture. The final phase is commenting. In this phase the child makes up sentences starting with “I”. Some other recent innovations used to help those with autism are apps online. One is the voice communicator which is a computerized PEC system. This app allows those with autism to choose words more easily and communicate more successfully.
Bahan, Ben. Hoffmeister, Robert. Lane, Harlan. A Journey into the Deaf World. USA: Dawn Sign Press.
Assistive technology is often used by individuals with a learning disability. A learning disability “describes a neurobiological disorder in which a person’s brain works or is structured differently” (Lee1). A person’s abilities can be severely affected from a learning disability. They may listen differently, talk differently, write, spell, organize, and work with school subjects in a different way. Learning disabilities also affect people’s individual and personal lives to a great extent. According to the National Institutes of Health, one in seven children has a learning disability. The disability manifests itself when the child shows difficulty in reading, writing, spelling, and conversing with others. The added time they need to process information may make them seem less intelligent then others around them, but this is not the case. Individuals with learning disabilities are just as smart as anyone else; they just need to learn in a different way. The earlier a learning disability is noticed and detected, the earlier a child may be able to learn how to deal with or compensate for it (Lee 1). This is where assistive technology comes into play.
Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) provides a way for children with autism to communicate. According to DeBonis and Donohue (2008), AAC is a communication option for individuals who have difficulty or inability to express themselves verbally. Children with autism who display difficulty in social situations and verbal communication may benefit from AAC use. AAC systems provide a way for children with autism to communicate, enhance verbal language, and participate in social interaction.
Through her incredible journey, Carly Fleischmann struggled to live a normal life after learning that she has been diagnosed with Autism and Oral Motor Apraxia. Autism is a severe developmental disorder that appears in the first three months after birth. Common features include persistent deficits in communication and social interactions, along with repetitive pattern behaviors or activities. Oral Motor Apraxia is a motor speech disorder with varying symptoms that depend on the age of the individual, and their severity. In Carly’s case, at ten years old she had shown continued delays in language and began to use a communication device called DynaWrite. This device enabled Carly to express her opinions and thoughts through a keyboard since she was unable to speak.
Simultaneous communication, also known as Sim-com is a form of communication process that utilizes both signs and sound. Quite often Sim-com has been referred to as a sign supported speech; these signs are usually in English in order to ensure that there is fluency in the language. In this, it is noted that some other non-verbal cues like the use of finger spelling and visual aids which rhyme to the spoken language can be used. Simultaneous communication has always been known to be a form of communication that is intended to help people who have hearing problems (deaf) understand what is being said. In this, it is realized that over the years, Sim-com has been able to utilize other systems of communication like seeing essential English. Sim-com has proven its advantageous use in both the deaf and hearing people because it presents both the spoken language and also the non-verbal. Simultaneous language is not only used by the deaf, but also used when communicating with students at the preschool level. This is important because these children tend not to understand verbal communication fully (Beginnings, 2014).
...speaker and the listener. The student can store often used responses, and prepare anticipated answers prior to situations where he will be meeting with those less familiar with his speech capabilities. By implementing this type of device, the student has become more confident and can communicate appropriately for a student his age. In this instance, the integration of technology into the learning environment may make a difference as to whether the student is employable or overlooked due to the inability to communicate well on the job.
... CLD info sheets: assistive technology. Council for Learning Disabilities. Retrieved on April 24, 2005, from http://www.cldinternational.org/c/@CS_yKIo7l8ozY/Pages/assistive.html