Aac Strategies for Individuals With Moderate to Severe Disabilities

With more children and young adults with severe disabilities in today¿s general education classrooms, SLPs and other professionals must be ready to support their students¿ communication skills with effective AAC. They¿ll get the proven strategies they need with this intervention guide from top AAC experts, ideal for use as an in-service professional development resource or a highly practical text students will keep and use long after class is over. Essential for SLPs, OTs, PTs, educators, and other professionals in school settings, this book helps readers establish a beginning functional communicative repertoire for learners with severe disabilities. Professionals will start with an in-depth intervention framework, including a guide to AAC modes and technologies, variables to consider when selecting AAC, and how AAC research can be used to support practice. Then they¿ll get explicit, evidence-based instructional strategies they¿ll use to help children and young adults initiate, maintain, and terminate an interaction, repair communication breakdowns, match graphic symbols to objects and events, request access to desired objects and activities, escape and avoid unwanted objects and activities, use alternative selection methods if they have severe motor impairments, strengthen language comprehension and adaptive functioning, and more. To help guide their interventions, professionals will get a CD-ROM with more than 35 blank forms and sample filled-in forms, plus helpful hints, research highlights, case examples, and chapter objectives. They¿ll also have a step-by-step primer on monitoring each learner¿s performance, including an overview of different types of measurement systems and when to use each of them.

Susan S. Johnston, Ph.D., is Professor in the Department of Special Education at the University of Utah. Joe Reichle, Ph.D., is Professor in the Departments of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences and Educational Psychology at the University of Minnesota. Kathleen M. Feeley, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Special Education and Literacy at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University in Brookville, New York. Emily A. Jones, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Queens College, The City University of New York, in Flushing, New York.