Device abandonment and swapping of AAC systems frequently is unfortunately common. But if it has been appropriately selected then usually all that is required is choosing a robust system, sticking to it and being dedicated to modelling it’s use. The below example illustrates the value of perseverance.
R is an adult who has been using Talking Brix to indicate 'yes' and 'no' for the past two years. While these have been instrumental in giving him a voice, the use of these is not consistent, there is no way to mount them to his chair for independent use and his interactions have been limited to answering yes/no questions. In order to give him access to more vocabulary, a partner assisted scanning book was introduced. You can download a copy of the book here. I have been working on a consistent 'yes' and 'no' by getting him to give a long blink for ‘yes’ and looking away for ‘no.’ This has been an extremely slow process where I often confirm his eye movement answers with Talking Brix to ensure that I am getting the correct message from him. I am still unable to correctly interpret his responses sometimes.
In our last session, he used only his eyes to say ‘yes’ to the 'pain/sick' option. He then said 'no' to ‘sick’ and 'yes' to ‘pain’. When I went to the page describing body parts, he selected 'head' but when asked whether it was his head that was in pain he said ‘no’. He then selected ‘stomach’. It took him almost the whole session to get his message across but he persisted until I understood what he was saying. He included vocalizations such as ‘hmmm’ and ‘uh-uh’ to help me along. He is often unable to use these sounds consistently but they were a great help in this session. It is unusual for him to be this persistent, he usually gives up and closes his eyes if it is taking me too long to understand what he is saying. Watch how to use partner assisted scanning with a communication book here.
His carer confirmed that his mic key has a sore around it that is improving but still causing him pain in the stomach area. If we had given up on R’s ability to use anything other than Talking Brix, he would have had no way of telling us what was bothering him unless we asked him specific yes/no questions relating to his mic key.
Our Introduction to AAC courses offer handy tips on how to illicit clear ‘yes’ and ‘no’ responses, how partner assisted scanning works, how to model effectively and other useful AAC strategies. For more information, please click here.