A(AC) Season for the Books

By: Margaret Moore, PRC-Saltillo Blogger

As the summer draws to a close, I am so looking forward to and preparing for the new, enthralling season of personal and professional milestones set to begin this fall. I am excited to be working with PRC-Saltillo at their 2023 American Speech–Language–Hearing Association Convention booth in November. Additionally, on October 2nd, I will celebrate the release of my first book, a disability memoir entitled Bold, Brave, and Breathless: Reveling in Childhood’s Splendiferous Glories While Facing Disability and Loss. My book is about my childhood growing up with cerebral palsy, relying on an AAC device, wheelchair, and walker, losing my father to stomach cancer before my second birthday, and being raised with two older brothers by a single mother who enabled my participation in regular education, athletics, Scouting, and other activities. It is available on Amazon here. 

As an AAC user, I will be taking two main steps to prepare for ASHA and for my author talks. First, I will program my device—my Accent 1000—with basic information to make it quick and easy to answer when asked to introduce myself, my book, and my technology. For the convention, I will input explanations about my speech and word prediction software, how I alternate between my joystick and eyegaze for access methods, and how I have succeeded in my educational and career endeavors through using my device. For author talks, I will prepare descriptions of how my book is structured, the rationale for some of the writing craft choices I made while composing it, and the intended purpose of the work.  

The second step I will take is to turn my speech on when I arrive at the events. This means I will set the device to read each word aloud as I type my messages. Doing so affords me several advantages. It gives others an opportunity to hear how I build my sentences. I imagine that speech therapists and assistive technology professionals at ASHA and perhaps even attendees at my author events may be interested in the timeframe and key/word selection that I use in developing sentences. Turning this feature on will additionally give me the ability to fill the silence that would settle in if I typed a response in front of the audience without my speech on. I don’t mind producing a spontaneous response without my speech on, but it is nice to be able to show people that sentiments I would like to share are in the works. It also helps to maintain the audience’s focus on the discussion.  

I can’t wait to see what riveting discussions emerge at my events this fall and am confident about my ability to efficiently engage in them because of these measures and settings on my device. Hopefully, this inspires others to explore the same or similar features and strategies so that their communication can be optimized wherever they find themselves this fall and beyond.