#aac setup

Tips for Setting Up AAC:

Transcript: "I have been seeing many people on here saying they feel overwhelmed or confused about how to set up their AAC devices. I thought I would give a tour of my device to give people a place to start with putting together their own pages.

To start with, this is my core words page, it is the first thing I see on the app when I open it. The core words page has the most commonly used words in the English language. My grid has sixty buttons on each page because that is what is accessible to me, but you want to have as many buttons as you can access on each page to make navigating as quick as possible.

There are two main ways I know of that AAC devices are organised. The first is by parts of speech, the second is by category. I use bits of both in my device.

For example, I have folders for nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, and little words like conjunctions and modifiers, which are parts of speech, but I also have folders for time, feeling, and common expressions, which are categories.

Here us my describing words page. It has a lot of common adjectives, and also has sub folders for specific types of adjectives.

"High"

"Below"

"Together"

"Funny"

"Weak"

"Whole"

"Rainbow"

Here is my feeling page. It is alphabetized and colour-coordinated by letter so that I can quickly find the colour of the letter I want without having to look through the whole list.

"I feel"

"Happy"

"Delighted"

"Confused"

"Overehelmed"

"I don't know what I'm feeling"

"I have lots of big feelings right now"

My quick fire page has whole phrases instead of single words.

"Me too"

"This device is my talker, it helps me communicate"

"Stop!"

"The time is 1:47 pm"

"I like you"

"Congratulations"

"That is frustrating"

Blithering idiot!"

"Not my circus, not my monkeys"

Under my core words page are more specific topic folders. They have a mix of nouns, verbs, and adjectives that are specific to the topic.

For example, here is my food page.

"Food"

"Breakfast"

"Hot dog"

"Coconut"

"Herb"

"Pitcher

"Thaw"

Some of my topic folders also have phrases, like my errands folder.

"I'm just looking, thanks"

"Do you have"

"How much is that?"

"Credit"

"Card"

The last thing I want to add is that AAC can have more uses than just communicating. I have a folder of recipes that my care providers help me put together to help me learn cooking skills.

"Let's make brownies"

"10 tablespoons butter"

"1 1/4 cup sugar"

"1/ teaspoon salt"

"Preheat oven to 325 degrees"

"Grease 8 by 8 baking pan"

"Mix butter, sugar, cocoa powder, vanilla"

"Mix until smooth"

"Bake for 20 to 25 minutes"

You can make folders for things like grocery lists, routine, social stories, anything you want.

Anyway, I hope this tour was helpful, if you have any questions just ask.

"Questions"

"Thank you. For. Watching"

Verbalflux means a person’s ability to verbalize fluctuates in intensity, difficulty, length, and frequency at any given time. They can speak, but their communication skills vary in terms of ease, frequency, and clarity. They may at times have difficulty speaking or not be able to speak at all. These variations might occur at random or be triggered by certain circumstances, and the severity and duration of these difficulties can vary!

Verbalflux is NOT fluctuating between nonverbal, semiverbal, etc. Please stop describing it like that. Those are permanent/long-term states.

Please don’t come at me with “but that’s not a medically recognized term”. I know and I don’t care. I use it to communicate MY experiences. MY support team knows the term. It may not be medically recognized but the term nonverbal is. The term nonspeaking is. There is a community.

Respect their definitions. Respect the people those terms apply to. Don’t water down the terms and generalize everything. Not everything™ is about you.

If you described it like that because you didn’t have another way to describe it, you can reference this post.

To the people who know better and claim to be advocates, shame on you.

No, it is not the same as selective mutism. No, it is not the same as verbal shutdowns.

Forgot update cool that I ended up while ago getting official PECS books in BOTH small and large sizes! Yippee!!!

Note: I I use PECS book as good communication book backup/alternitive to my high tech AAC, not as PECS official learning system wich is not very good thing ive ben told!

I mosty use Small one thogh (you can tell by bag of hundred plus extra symbols cards I have next to it in picture and that it have a prety rainbow stars strap on it to carry it!) but both are prety purple and I got the official PECS rainbow inserts for both but diffrence is I got two sets for small book and one set for big but on big book we put Velcro on both sides the inserts! And self/staff make cards for Small book but big book it use cards from PECS official PECS 151 cards set!

Namely where we can see the actual aac! Video, screenshots, resources links

Anything AAC

I've recently been having more struggles with speaking and speech assistant just isn't working well for me anymore. Typing sentences is getting harder sometimes as well. I just wasn't sure if it would be okay to use your set-up as a guide, I don't want to overstep 😅

not a silly question at all!! you’re more than welcome to.

i appreciate you asking though!! AAC layouts can be super personal.

however, you don’t have to piece it out from my banner! that seems like it would be a bit annoying in practice. so, below the cut you will find my home board, and some of my current boards one click in (with important information omitted of course!) as a way to see how i organize things from that point further. you don’t have to use my word lists, but i don’t mind sharing them if they might help you!

don’t ask me why i’ve organized things the way i have. it makes sense to me and that’s all that matters.

i hope something good happens to you today!

chrome

ps - check alt text for the names of each boards as well as their image description. also eyestrain warning because my boards are very high contrast.

You're not wasting time or resources, it's meant to help you

Sometimes what worked earlier no longer works for you

Got TD snap on bug! Very exciting.