4.8 Augmentative and Alternative Communication and Expanding Communication

What AAC Is and Who Needs It

Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) is any method that supplements or replaces natural speech and writing. "Augmentative" means it adds to existing speech; "alternative" means it substitutes for speech that is absent or unintelligible. Objective 0007 asks candidates to apply knowledge of strategies for increasing communication, including AAC devices and systems, and to create varied opportunities for written, verbal, nonverbal, and visual communication.

Unaided and Aided Systems

Access method is a separate decision from the system: direct selection (finger, hand, head pointer), scanning (the device steps through options and the user activates a switch at the right moment), or eye-gaze tracking. Access is a motor and visual question and should be decided with the occupational or physical therapist and the speech-language pathologist together.

The No-Prerequisites Principle

This is the most heavily tested idea in AAC and the one most often violated in practice. There are no cognitive, age, or behavioral prerequisites for AAC. Specifically:

• A student does not have to demonstrate a certain mental age, cause-and-effect understanding, or a minimum IQ before receiving a system.
• A student does not have to "fail" speech therapy first.
• A student does not have to be nonverbal; students with unintelligible or unreliable speech benefit from augmentation.
• Introducing AAC does not suppress natural speech. The research consistently shows the opposite: speech production is more likely to increase than decrease after AAC is introduced. Families frequently raise this concern, and the special educator should be able to answer it accurately and kindly.

The legal frame reinforces this. IDEA requires the IEP team to consider whether the child requires assistive technology devices and services at every annual IEP meeting, and requires that a child's communication needs be considered as a special factor. A district may not delay a system for budget reasons.

Core Vocabulary Versus Fringe Vocabulary

• Core vocabulary is the small set of high-frequency words — roughly 200 to 400 — that accounts for the large majority of everything anyone says: want, go, stop, more, help, that, my, not, it, like, different, finished. Core words are mostly verbs, pronouns, and modifiers rather than nouns, and they combine to say almost anything.
• Fringe vocabulary is specific and personal: names, favorite foods, characters, class topics.

A system built only of fringe nouns produces a student who can request objects and nothing else. Core vocabulary must be present, in a stable, consistent location on the display (motor planning depends on words not moving), and taught deliberately.

Teaching Communication, Not Just Devices

Aided Language Stimulation Is the Core Method

A student cannot learn a language they never see used. Aided language stimulation (also called aided language modeling or partner-augmented input) means the communication partner points to symbols on the student's own system while speaking, continuously and without requiring the student to respond. It is the AAC equivalent of the thousands of hours of spoken language a speaking child hears before producing a sentence.

Practical rules:

• Model more than you expect back. If the student uses two symbols, model three or four.
• Model across all communicative functions, not just requests — comment, protest, joke, ask.
• Model without demand. Constant "show me," "where's the picture," and "tell me what you want" turn the system into a test.
• Model during real activities the student cares about, not in isolated drill.
• Leave the system available at all times, including recess, lunch, therapy, the bus, and home. A device locked in a cabinet or left in the classroom during specials is not a communication system.

Functional Communication Training and the Behavior Link

When a challenging behavior is maintained by escape, attention, or access to tangibles, the behavior is communication. Functional communication training teaches a functionally equivalent communicative response — a break card, a help symbol, a "my turn" button — that produces the same outcome more efficiently than the behavior did. This is the strongest reason a special educator needs AAC fluency even when a speech-language pathologist owns the system: the behavior plan will fail if the replacement response is harder or slower than the problem behavior.

The Four Components of Communicative Competence

Janice Light's framework defines what instruction must build:

1. Linguistic competence — vocabulary, grammar, and the symbol system itself, in the student's home language as well as English where relevant.
2. Operational competence — the technical skills to run the system: navigating pages, powering on, charging, requesting repair, and managing a low battery.
3. Social competence — initiating, taking turns, maintaining a topic, adjusting to different partners, and knowing when not to speak.
4. Strategic competence — compensating when the system fails: signaling a breakdown, spelling a missing word, using a partner-assisted strategy, or asking a partner to guess.

Most programs teach only operational competence and stop, which produces a student who can navigate menus but cannot hold a conversation.

Varied Communication Opportunities for All Students

The framework's requirement is broader than AAC: create varied opportunities for written, verbal, nonverbal, and visual communication for every student. In practice this means designing tasks whose product can be an oral explanation, a recorded audio response, a labeled diagram, a video, a slide, a demonstration, or a written text; using structured discussion protocols such as think-pair-share so participation is not limited to students who can compete for the floor; and building communication temptations into routines — an item just out of reach, a missing piece, a broken step in a familiar sequence — that give a reason to communicate. A classroom where the adult narrates everything and hands students what they need before they ask has removed the reason to communicate at all.