Join us for an deep dive into into one of two AAC-related topics on November 5, 2025. Participants at #TalkingAAC will have 2 amazing pre-conference sessions to choose from. These four hour sessions are intended to provide the opportunity for more in-depth exploration of specified topics. Purchase #Talking AAC Pre-Conference tickets for just $100. (Note: this ticket is separate from tickets for the main conference which takes place November 6&7.
Choose from:
Adapting AAC Training to Impact Communication Partners
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Pam Harris
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Barbara van 't Westende
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Supporting emergent AAC learners is a team effort. Implementing AAC across all the student’s natural environments, with their daily communication partners, puts new and challenging demands on AAC coaches and specialists. For strong AAC adoption, we need to train a diverse set of classroom staff and parents to do the day-to-day work of modeling, making AAC available, teaching language, and demonstrating new skills. The team is often learning about AAC while being asked to adopt new habits, mindsets, and teaching practices. As AAC coaches and specialists, we are called on to inspire, motivate, and sustain change in the behavior of a wide range of communication partners. This requires us to learn and apply new soft skills in leading and managing change. Sometimes we are successful and AAC is used across the student’s day, while other times, despite our best efforts, we struggle to get everyone on board. If you want to get more consistent and productive results for your students, then this pre-conference is for you! We will share insights and strategies to help you lead change in AAC practice across all members of the IEP team. We will help you evaluate which strategy will be most effective with different team members, so you can adapt your approach, meet each partner where they are at, and maximize your impact.
In this session, we will explore insights from AssistiveWare's research on how parents and teachers adopt new AAC practices. One major finding from our research is that some of the biggest barriers to successful AAC implementation are not about specific AAC skills or knowledge. For many partners, the barriers are about habit formation, the experience of change itself, and the emotions related to starting AAC. We analyzed why different members of the team often have different responses to the planning, support and motivation strategies used by AAC coaches and specialists. We applied insights from change theory, psychology, and cognitive science to identify patterns in these responses. We will share this knowledge with you, to help you recognize these patterns so you can adjust your approach to meet parents and teachers where they are and build their capacity to support AAC learners.
The best part is that the insights we will apply are applicable to anyone leading change. Participants will leave with evidence-based strategies to help build communication partner capacity to support emergent AAC users.
In this session, we will explore insights from AssistiveWare's research on how parents and teachers adopt new AAC practices. One major finding from our research is that some of the biggest barriers to successful AAC implementation are not about specific AAC skills or knowledge. For many partners, the barriers are about habit formation, the experience of change itself, and the emotions related to starting AAC. We analyzed why different members of the team often have different responses to the planning, support and motivation strategies used by AAC coaches and specialists. We applied insights from change theory, psychology, and cognitive science to identify patterns in these responses. We will share this knowledge with you, to help you recognize these patterns so you can adjust your approach to meet parents and teachers where they are and build their capacity to support AAC learners.
The best part is that the insights we will apply are applicable to anyone leading change. Participants will leave with evidence-based strategies to help build communication partner capacity to support emergent AAC users.
Neurodiversity Affirming AAC for All?: A Workshop on Historical Contexts, Current Practices, and Future Possibilities
Karina Saechao
Neurodiversity affirming practice spans multiple fields and scopes of practice, including speech therapy with complex communicators. The concept of neurodiversity stems from multiple, collective origins and refers to the concept that neurological differences are the result of natural human variation and are valuable to human diversity. Neurodiversity affirming care is not just a buzz word, it is a practice and encompasses and applies to a variety of neurotypes including and beyond the autistic population. However, not all people have historically been represented in the movement toward neurodiversity affirming care, leaving out individuals from multiply marginalized backgrounds, including people of the global majority, those with rare neurocognitive disabilities, and individuals with complex communication needs, among others. Additionally, popular discussions of neurodiversity affirming care have not included discussions of the systems of oppression, intersectional theory, and culturally responsive practice and how leaving those out stalls progress for multiply marginalized communities. Differences in cultural norms and values (i.e. collectivist versus individualistic cultures) may impact the delivery of neurodiversity affirming care. Lastly, current practices in speech pathology focus on teaching AAC users how to enter the language and communication world of neurotypical individuals who use spoken language as their primary communication form, going against principals of neurodiversity affirming practices.
Neurodiversity as a concept has been around for a few decades. However, some of its origins have been misattributed and the theory, including its application, has been observed to be misunderstood and thus misapplied. Led by a speech language pathologist and AAC specialist with over a decade of experience, during this workshop the presenter will partner with and guide attendees to rethink, relearn, reimagine, and redress! what we know about working with neurodiverse AAC users and their communities. The beginning of this talk will work through breaking down this claim by 1. journeying through historical contexts that inform the need for neurodiversity affirming practices and care, 2. discussing current practices among SLPs as related to individuals with complex communication needs, 3. collectively discussing the future possibilities of client/patient and family-centered care practices informed by neurodiversity affirming care principles. The second half of this workshop will include two case studies of students with complex communication needs and incorporate relevant theories and frameworks from the disability, neurodiversity, and AAC literature to reimagine future possibilities for therapeutic AAC services with complex communicators. Attendees will leave this interactive workshop with takeaways that can be applied on “Monday.” Together, we will work through implementation of neurodiversity affirming care practices from pre-referral to recommendation -including clinical reasoning, goal formation, treatment planning, service delivery, and strategies for caregiver and educator coaching.
Neurodiversity as a concept has been around for a few decades. However, some of its origins have been misattributed and the theory, including its application, has been observed to be misunderstood and thus misapplied. Led by a speech language pathologist and AAC specialist with over a decade of experience, during this workshop the presenter will partner with and guide attendees to rethink, relearn, reimagine, and redress! what we know about working with neurodiverse AAC users and their communities. The beginning of this talk will work through breaking down this claim by 1. journeying through historical contexts that inform the need for neurodiversity affirming practices and care, 2. discussing current practices among SLPs as related to individuals with complex communication needs, 3. collectively discussing the future possibilities of client/patient and family-centered care practices informed by neurodiversity affirming care principles. The second half of this workshop will include two case studies of students with complex communication needs and incorporate relevant theories and frameworks from the disability, neurodiversity, and AAC literature to reimagine future possibilities for therapeutic AAC services with complex communicators. Attendees will leave this interactive workshop with takeaways that can be applied on “Monday.” Together, we will work through implementation of neurodiversity affirming care practices from pre-referral to recommendation -including clinical reasoning, goal formation, treatment planning, service delivery, and strategies for caregiver and educator coaching.