Episode 191: TWT Live: Closing the Gap - Part 2

This week, the TWT team presents part 2 of Talking with Tech Live: Closing the Gap! This week, Rachel and Chris discuss several topics with the audience, including personal core /key vocabulary, the importance of literacy, and overcoming barriers to high-tech AAC in school districts. 

If you would like to listen to Part 1 of this presentation, you can listen at talkingwithtech.org/episodes/twt-live-ctg-1

Before Part 2, Rachel and Chris discuss PECS in greater detail, including why motor planning is so important when comparing PECS to other AAC options, the consensus among experts that Chris and Rachel trust about PECS vs. more robust AAC, and why choosing robust AAC has the least chance of harming the client.

Key ideas this week: 

🔑 Without the benefit of a motor plan, using PECS to communicate can be more fatiguing than using more robust AAC. For some of Rachel’s clients, making limited progress on PECS made the family resistant to other AAC options later on.

🔑 When making a difficult decision between strategies as clinicians (e.g. PECS vs robust AAC for a client with some verbal skills), we should choose the intervention with the lowest chance of doing harm. If we assume the client will will need AAC in some form forever, the time spent teaching PECS could have been better spent learning motor plans on a robust AAC device.

🔑 If we are trying to help teachers and admins embrace robust AAC, you can point to the abuse and neglect statistics for people with disabilities. Teaching language through robust communication systems gives students a better tool to future abuse and neglect in the future.