AAC Awareness Month

October is AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) Awareness Month – you may have seen some of our posts over on our Facebook page.

AAC empowers individuals with communication difficulties to express their wants, needs, thoughts and ideas. At Montrose, many of our clients use a range of AAC such as PECS, PODD and speech generating devices to name a few!

Top two pics – Jacob using switches – he uses a communication switch to ask for more of a preferred action, to play with switch toys (cause and effect skills), and to activate a game on the iPad.

lower left – Zama is using a combination of speech and a visual choiceboard with sentence strip to choose his activities. He is also learning how to use the PODD (Pragmatic Organisation Dynamic Display) to support his spoken language.

lower right – Amber using eye gaze – Amber is learning how to make choices of activities using eye gaze and to improve her accuracy through exploring sensory and cause and effect games on the device.

Funding this type of assistive technology through the NDIS

There are so many kinds of equipment and assistive technology that are designed to make life easier for people with a disability. Some are cutting edge and high tech while other items are more basic but potentially just as life changing.

To find out more about what you can access and the process involved, read more here.