Aac and Children with Developmental Disabilities

Children with developmental language or speech disorders frequently benefit from augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) strategies. These children have severe expressive or receptive communication disorders or both which sometimes occur in isolation, or as part of a global developmental disability. Children with specific language impairment, pervasive developmental disorder, developmental apraxia of speech, autism, Down syndrome, or other types of developmental disabilities may need to use AAC strategies to supplement or enhance their language development. These children offer challenges to professionals, especially during the early years of language development. In the very young child, it is often difficult to determine the nature and degree of language impairment, to accurately diagnose the presence of other factors such as cognitive disabilities, and to predict the child's future prognosis for language or speech development. In the past, young children diagnosed with severe language and speech disorders would have eceived years of traditional speech therapy focused on developing spoken communication skills (Silverman, 1995). AAC would have been recommended only after traditional therapy techniques had failed. Today, professionals realize that AAC strategies can provide children who have developmental delays with an immediate means of communication; can facilitate expressive and receptive language development until other communication modalities improve (i.e., speech); and can serve as a bridge to future spoken language development (Kangas & Lloyd, 1988; Silverman 1995). AAC provides an expressive method of communication to facilitate language development in children who, in all likelihood, will eventually use speech to communicate. The focus of this chapter is on children with developmental disabilities who have the potential to use AAC strategies to develop receptive and expressive language skills, including speech. The chapter begins by presenting an overview of using AAC as a tool to enhance language and speech development. Specific AAC assessment and intervention issues are then presented in two separate sections for children with developmental apraxia of speech and for children with pervasive developmental disorders, including autism.