AAC Evaluation & Therapy

AAC is any method of communicating that supplements or replaces speech — picture boards, sign, or a speech-generating device on a tablet. It is for anyone whose speech does not yet meet their communication needs, whether that is temporary or long term.

One myth worth putting down immediately

AAC does not stop a child from talking. The research consistently points the other way — giving a child a reliable way to communicate tends to support speech development rather than replace it.

Waiting to “see if speech comes first” usually costs a child months of not being understood. Those are months of frustration, and often of behaviour that gets misread as defiance when it is really a child with no way to tell you what they need.

What an AAC evaluation covers

• Matching the system to the person — not to what is fashionable or what a device rep recommends
• Low-tech options: picture boards, choice boards, core boards
• High-tech speech-generating devices and apps
• Motor access — how the person will physically select what they want to say
• Vocabulary organisation that grows with them

What therapy works on

• Teaching the system to the child and the family
• Building from single messages toward sentences
• Modelling — using the system yourself so the child sees it in use
• Using AAC alongside speech work, not instead of it
• Carrying the system into school, home, and community settings

Who AAC is for

AAC is not a last resort and it is not only for children who will never speak. It is appropriate whenever the gap between what someone wants to say and what they can say is causing them to go unheard — including children with childhood apraxia of speech, significant language disorders, or complex communication needs.