It’s (Pause for Rhythmic Effect) National Poetry Month: Tailoring AAC Speech for ...

By Margaret Moore, PRC-Saltillo Blogger

April is National Poetry Month. As a writer who earned my Master of Fine Arts degree in creative nonfiction and poetry writing, I traditionally find myself giving public readings of my original poems during this season. As opposed to a prose narrative, poetry calls for specific rhythms and pauses to be incorporated when reading work aloud. On a page, rules of grammar and punctuation are bent, and lines often end without punctuation.  

While AAC devices have come a long way in the 20+ years I have been using them, I learned very quickly that, even today, they don’t recognize return lines as places where the voice should briefly pause. If, for example, I decide to write a poem that does not have commas, periods, or em dashes at the end of my lines, my device will read it aloud as though it were a very long run-on sentence. It would also read it really fast since it would not have any punctuation to indicate how the reading should be paced. 

Through experimentation, I have devised ways to incorporate these pauses. I first write the poem in a word processor without worrying about how my device will read it aloud. When it is finished, I save the original—this allows me to preserve the format that I would like readers to see when looking at the text on a page. I then make a copy of the document that will specifically be used to read audibly. I add punctuation to this version, placing periods where I want the device to pause like it’s at a sentence’s conclusion, commas where I want just a brief pause, and two consecutive hyphens where I’d like a pause that is in between these options. If I need an extensive pause, I use an ellipsis. Afterwards, I load my document into my speech software using PRC-Saltillo’s notebook feature, which allows for text to be copied in without requiring me to retype any of it. Listening to my device read the poem, I adjust and add more punctuation in spots where the pauses do not sound as prolonged as they should.  The software enables me to choose a key and turn it into a shortcut to my poem so I don’t have to go through the device menus to access it, making it quick and easy to pull up when my reading begins.  

Of course not all AAC users are poets and writers looking to read their works. These strategies, though, can be used when typing sentiments that need pauses for emphasis in regular conversations and speeches.