When I was 19 and in my second year of college, I worked in a supermarket deli. Every individual item in the deli had its own four-digit code. Land O’Lakes American cheese had a different code than New Yorker American cheese. You might think that it doesn’t matter, but it did. Each week there were different sales and the price depended on the code being correct. So it mattered to the customers. Those codes also determined which items were ordered, so it mattered to the supermarket.
I remember looking at the list of hundreds of deli items…some meats and cheeses that I had never seen, and will be completely fine if I never see again. It was so complex. The first few days, I had to look at the list every time I sliced something. I put post it notes on the more frequently used items and once I knew them, I’d target new items.
Soon, shifts passed, and I’d realize that I didn’t need the list at all. As I used them, the four digit codes were paired with their corresponding meats and cheeses, and I didn’t have to think about the codes…even for the least common items. My hand just entered them.
It wasn’t complex. Just unfamiliar.
You probably see where I’m going with this.
When people see the Speak for Yourself Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) app for the first time, often their eyes widen with fear. Sometimes they say, “Those buttons are so small!” or “That’s a lot to take in visually.” They’re right. The buttons are small. There is a lot visually when all of the buttons are showing. When we show professionals at conferences that you can quickly minimize the number of buttons showing, they visibly relax.
Professionals at conferences will sometimes look at SfY and say, “So this is for students with high cognition?” Again and again, we have seen inaccurate cognitive assessments for students with CCN.
When people comment in person or online that Speak for Yourself is complex or only for students with “high cognition,” it is an immediate indication that they are unfamiliar with the app.
Interestingly, when students with complex communication needs (CCN) see the full screen and many small buttons on Speak for Yourself, their eyes often widen as well…but with excitement.
It makes sense. Imagine listening to language all day every day, like each of us does. Mouths moving and words swirling in the air all around you and within you, but out of your reach. Then someone gives you an iPad and each of those words are suddenly right in your hands…literally at your fingertips! I think we underestimate how often our students realize the immensity of that moment.
Frequently parents, teachers, and therapists will say that the student knows the device better than they do. I’ve been in classrooms where the teacher will say, “Jack, can you help me find that word?” and the student finds it or taps the search feature icon and looks up at the teacher. Brilliant, right? You won’t know if they can use it unless you give them the opportunity to be brilliant.
We all know that the stakes are high for our AAC learners. Without communication, they’re likely to be underestimated for the rest of their educational experience and beyond.
How many receptive identification tasks are endured daily by our students who have CCN?
How many times have they heard professionals talk negatively about them right in front of them and had no choice but to be silent?
When they look at that screen with all of its buttons, maybe instead of seeing complexity, they’re seeing possibility. They realize that for the first time, they can say the name of ANY of the Sesame Street characters, instead of the only one they could verbally approximate, “Elmo.”
It is comprehensive without being complicated.
Once professionals and parents start using Speak for Yourself with a child, they say that it’s simple and manageable. The programming is fast. Nothing is more than two touches away.
Students don’t have to understand categorization, even though each main screen button links to a category.
There are symbols, but a student doesn’t have to understand symbolic representation to use Speak for Yourself.
There is the potential for the app to have 119 pages and 14,000 words, but students don’t have to be able to manage page navigation.
They don’t have to know how to read.
When people learn to use Speak for Yourself, they learn it using motor planning…they learn the location of the words. It’s like turning over the cards in a Memory game, where the cards are always put back in the exact same place. Very young children with CCN are able to figure it out and use it successfully.
So, if you are unfamiliar with Speak for Yourself, don’t assume it’s complex. And even more importantly, allow for the possibility that your students are capable of learning it. It matters. We use language to express our cognition. Give students language so that they can learn to express all that they know, but especially, give students language because communication is a basic human right.
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