A Reflection for AAC Awareness Month
Sometimes revisiting old things brings new understanding. Today, I reinstalled the Speech Blubs app on James’ iPad. He used to push it away. But this time, he stayed. He engaged, we laughed, we enjoyed it — and I felt something had significantly shifted, not in the app, but in us.
It may be small, but I am overjoyed. It was quiet proof that progress can return with exploration, persistence, and hope — the very things that truly help children with non-speaking autism.
AAC and Assistive Technology
AAC (Alternative and Augmentative Communication) is a set of tools and techniques for understanding how to support learners with speech, language, and communication differences. It includes valuing all forms of communication. Assistive Technology is one example of AAC innovation and how it can support teaching and learning.
Speech Blubs is an application designed to support home-based speech therapy using technology, and in this way, it serves as a learning tool to augment communication.
Assistive Technology applications that support speech generation, spelling and motor planning difficulties can expedite learning, offering pathways that might otherwise take a lifetime to build. In fact, Jane Korsten (2008) calculated that if an AAC user only learns during therapy, it could take 84 years to reach the same language exposure a typically developing toddler experiences naturally.
The significance of this is clear: exposure and immersion are vital. Every shared word, every modelled symbol, every small gesture counts.
If only one person models AAC, in a small room, for a few minutes a week, progress will always be slow. But if everyone — parents, teachers, peers, and communities — embraces it, the immersion that follows can transform understanding. That’s what inclusion really looks like.
Technology helps me find my own voice, too. Writing is my version of AAC — a way to make sense of what I can’t always say aloud. In this sometimes lonely space, the tapping of words becomes a kind of therapy — a reminder that connection happens through expression, not just speech.
Inclusion
We all come from different spaces of experience and education, yet the truth that shines through is that autism doesn’t discriminate — not by age, origin, ethnicity, or social status. What does create difference is access: access to understanding, to support, to opportunity.
Statistics show clear patterns — children from underprivileged or low-income families are often the ones most at risk of being left behind. Not because they lack potential, but because privilege opens doors that others must fight to find.
I’ve just finished my postgraduate certificate in Inclusion, and I’m still unravelling everything I’ve learned. The research gave me hope — but it also deepened my sadness. I see how much is lost when understanding and support come too late, or sometimes not at all.
“I didn’t choose to become a student of Special Needs; it doesn’t come easily. But we have to learn. It’s part of the job — and like any job, learning is the only way to do it well.”
I am James' mum 