Augmentative and Alternative Communication - Scope

Scope

Augmentative and alternative communication is used by individuals to compensate for severe speech-language impairments in the expression or comprehension of spoken or written language. People making use of AAC include individuals with a variety of congenital conditions such as cerebral palsy, autism, intellectual disability, and acquired conditions such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, traumatic brain injury and aphasia. Prevalence data vary depending on the country and age/disabilities surveyed, but typically between 0.1 to 1.5% of the population are considered to have such severe speech-language impairments that they have difficulty making themselves understood, and thus could benefit from AAC. An estimated 0.05% of children and young people require high technology AAC. Well-known AAC users include physicist Stephen Hawking, broadcaster Roger Ebert and poet Christopher Nolan. Award-winning films such as My Left Foot and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, based on books by AAC users Christy Brown and Jean-Dominique Bauby respectively, have brought the lives of those who use AAC to a wider audience.

The field was originally called "Augmentative Communication"; the term served to indicate that such communication systems were to supplement natural speech rather than to replace it. The addition of "alternative" followed later, when it became clear that for some individuals non-speech systems were their only means of communication. AAC users typically utilize a variety of aided and unaided communication strategies depending on the communication partners and the context.