#TalkingAAC 2024

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is dramatically impacting the lives of all of us, including students and individuals with disabilities, by taking traditional resources and supports to a new level of accessibility and sophistication. AI technologies can help individuals with disabilities participate in educational and leisure experiences, access information, and communicate more effectively. This includes the direct use of AI tools as instructional and assistive technology. Additionally AI tools can be used by professionals to increase efficiency, elevate the creativity and quality of lesson plans and learning materials, and analyze research, evidence, and data to reflect on practices and improve outcomes.  
This session explores some of the ways that educational professionals can use AI in an everyday context, along with the implications, benefits, and challenges associated with the use of AI. In the session, participants will learn exactly what AI is, and what it is not. Participants will be introduced to a variety of educational, creative, and productivity tools that leverage AI, including some that are likely already available to them. We will explore ways that learners can utilize AI, including increasing access to educational and therapy resources, providing feedback and insights, and enhancing learner or worker productivity. Participants will also explore ways that they can capitalize on AI to raise their own productivity, create customized therapy materials, and support their own professional learning. Participants will learn about strategies to use AI to: -spend less time writing emails, reports, and notes -make learning materials more accessible, including auto generated Alt-Text -enhance slide decks for professional learning or for use with clients -support spelling and grammar for clients (or themselves!) -expand vocabulary with word prediction and autocomplete -create custom reading passages to address decoding, comprehension and fluency skills -create custom voices for AAC -generate images with words -organizational and executive function support -analyze and synthesize research and data -and more!
Finally, participants will delve into necessary considerations regarding the implementation of AI, including data privacy, security, AI bias, ethical considerations, and reliability. This session will not be your typical sit and get lecture. Participants will get up close with AI tools through hands-on demonstrations, experiencing firsthand how they can be applied in therapy sessions. The presenter will share real-world case studies showcasing successful AI integration into educational practices, highlighting challenges overcome and outcomes achieved. As a group, we will share our experiences, concerns, and ideas about adopting AI in speech therapy and collaborate on the creation of a resource everyone can use and reference in the future.

The purpose of this presentation is to share our team’s experience implementing both low and high tech AAC in our preschool classroom while providing a safe space for an open and honest discussion with attendees to learn from everyone in attendance. When our current preschool special education team came together two years ago, we were overwhelmed with the level of communication needs in the classroom. There were between 20-24 students in our district Early Childhood Special Education classrooms, and all were non- or minimally speaking. Every caregiver listed communication as their primary concern at an IEP. We were experiencing a significant increase and escalation in behaviors as a direct result of these communication concerns.  Our team knew that we needed a more comprehensive and robust approach to support communication, and we were overwhelmed thinking about how to move forward. We were intimidated by all of the ideas and information coming from seasoned professionals or experts at conference presentations, consultants, and every SLP/Early Childhood/ASD/parent account on Instagram telling us what we should (or shouldn’t) be doing to create the ideal communication-focused classroom. We decided to jump in, knowing that mistakes would be made as we continued to learn.        

With the support of our county’s assistive technology and ASD consultants, we determined which supports we would use (108-icon county-wide core board and speech generating devices) and decided to focus our efforts on these areas:
Training of all staff
Modeling without expectation across all classroom activities
Supporting and involving families

The presentation will go into detail about what each of those areas looked like for us and how moving forward to just get started impacted our classroom, students, and their families. In each area, participants will be encouraged to share their thoughts, experiences, and ideas with the expectation that no one is the “expert,” and we can all learn from each other.

Providing professional development and community engagement opportunities related to AAC centered around real-life experiences and neurodiversity affirming practices in the school setting fosters engagement, belonging, and inclusion.  This presentation is created to provide ideas for building capacity, challenging limiting beliefs, and creating meaningful relationships by collaborating with AAC users to share real-life AAC experiences with staff, students, and families with a goal to increase communication partner competency and capability.  This presentation will discuss incorporating AAC user perspectives when developing evidenced-based professional development opportunities for professional and paraprofessional staff. We will discuss the impact we’ve seen, shifting the perspective of “Speech-Language Pathologist as the expert on AAC” to acknowledging that the true experts are AAC users themselves. Mateo Moreno, an AAC user since the age of 4, in collaboration with Bre Hof and Jordan Murray, school-based speech-language pathologists and AAC consultants, will discuss the why. Mateo will share his perspective on why AAC users should play a big role in the conversations.   As the only AAC user growing up in his school district, he knows how important it is for learners to meet mentors and for peers to learn how to communicate with their friends who just happen to talk differently. His presentations serve as a springboard and help make the professional advice stick. Plus, educators see what’s possible when the entire team works together to support emergent AAC users. Bre and Jordan will outline the impact collaboration with Mateo has made on staff mindsets and the data we’ve seen as part of an ongoing journey to build an AAC community that supports each other in our rural setting.  

First written in 1995, revised in 2016, the Communication Bill of Rights is an important document created by the National Joint Committee for the Communication Needs of Persons With Severe Disabilities (NJC), that outlines 15 fundamental rights for all communicators. While many professionals who support complex communicators, are familiar with these rights, how many AAC communicators are aware of the rights afforded them along with the  teams making decisions that impact them? How do we empower AAC users to self-advocate and AAC professionals to advocate for those who use AAC? 
Let’s take the Communication Bill of Rights off the wall and put it into practice. 
Initial results for those who use AAC were increased:

• Participation in social settings
• Engagement in the classroom
• Asking more questions to gain information
• Frequency and use of a variety of communicative functions
• Opportunities to develop meaningful skills and
• Happiness, joy, and connectedness. 

Professionals who support those who may benefit from AAC carry the power to influence others. We will discuss the many ways they can create change within their spheres of influence. Participants will be encouraged to identify their advocacy style and explore practical and promising ideas to use as they better the experience of the communicators they support.