Talking With Tech AAC Podcast

This week, Chris interviews Judith Schoonover, an occupational therapist who, along with Chris, was a founding member of the Loudoun County School District Assistive Technology Team. She shares about the importance of focusing on the specific needs of a student during assessment, not just their label; the consistent move of technology from special education to general education, her history as an...

In this “Recast” episode of Talking with Tech, we share a remastered episode that was previously aired on the podcast. This episode, Chris Bugaj, Rachel Madel, and Lucas Stuber have a roundtable discussion about the key components of aided language stimulation, i.e. modeling. This means that the the communication partner uses the same communication system as the AAC user to model communication exc...

In this “Recast” episode of Talking with Tech, we share a remastered episode that was previously aired on the podcast. This episode includes Chris Bugaj’s interview with Chris Klein, a full time AAC user, disability advocate, and mentor. They discuss Chris Klein’s presentation at ATIA about motor planning and the “external lexicon” of AAC users.    Before the interview, Chris Bugaj, Rachel Madel,...

In this “Recast” episode of Talking with Tech, we share a remastered episode that was previously aired on the podcast. This episode includes Chris Bugaj’s interview with Shaun Pearson and Chris Chichoskikelly about the AAC Agreements, a set of “better” practices around AAC that were crowd sourced from stakeholders in the area of AAC at the ATIA conference in 2016 and 2018. You can learn more about...

In this “Recast” episode of Talking with Tech, we share a remastered episode that was previously aired on the podcast. This episode is a “roundtable” discussion between previous co-host Lucas Steuber, Christopher Bugaj, and Rachel Madel. They discuss core words, a relatively small set of high-frequency words, often between 100-300, which make up 80% of what we say every day. Teaching core words to...

This week, Chris and Rachel interview Jordyn Zimmerman, an autistic nonspeaking adult who was featured in the documentary “This is Not About Me.” This is Not About Me covers Jordyn’s journey trying to be included in school and to get access to robust AAC. Jordyn shares about the challenges with an education system that can segregate disabled students without giving them equal opportunities, the pr...

This week, Rachel and Chris interview Rebecca Gettings, a parent of an AAC user in Arizona. Her son, Carter, has complex communication needs and uses eye tracking. Rachel shares about her journey from learning about AAC to supporting Carter’s literacy, as well as some of her AAC and inclusion advocacy in Yuma, Arizona.   Before the interview, Chris and Rachel discuss some ways that Rachel has used...

This week, we share Chris’s interview with Sydney Elcan Birchfield, an OT Assistant working in the schools and a graduate student in Assistive Technology at George Mason University! Sydney interviews Chris about his career and approach to assistive technology, including what Chris’s focus on inclusive design, including more AT in the IEP, the need for AT considerations vs AT assessments, free AT p...

This week, we share Chris’s coaching call with Sarah Seiger! Sarah is an SLP at a nonpublic/nonprofit school in Cleveland, OH that supports students with complex needs from multiple local school districts. Sarah is trying to develop more processes for her school’s efforts to get more students AAC, including questions about trialing, collaboration with teachers, modeling, and more!   Before the int...

This week, we share another episode of Small Talks, where we share small interviews with previous guests. This week, we share Small Talks with Darla Ashton, Hank Poore, Sean Sweeney, Shelley Anderson, and Tami Altschuler!   Before the interviews, Chris and Rachel talk about the CRAAP test. This test provides a list of questions to ask yourself when deciding whether or not a source is reliable and...

This week, we present Part 2 of Chris interview with Samantha Hagness and Becky Woolley, two AT/AAC Specialists from the Mesa Public Schools, as they continue to explore integrating Grid for Education into classrooms along with TouchChat. In this episode, Chris inquires more about Samantha and Becky’s plans for modeling on TouchChat while Grid for Education is being used, as well as ideas for inte...

This week, Chris interviews Samantha Hagness and Becky Woolley, two AT/AAC Specialists from the Mesa Public Schools. They chat about some of their successes and setbacks with using TouchChat as their Tier 1 approach under the Specific Language System First approach and some ideas they had to integrate Grid 3 into their classrooms along with TouchChat.   Before the interview, Chris and Rachel chat...

This week, we present Rachel’s interview with Alyssa Hillary Zisk and Lily Konyn, two autistic part-time AAC users who are members of the AAC Research Team at AssistiveWare. Alyssa and Lily discuss Gestalt Language Processing, including research into using immediate and delayed echolalia for communicative purposes and why research suggests someone being a “gestalt language processor” may be more o...

This week, we share Chris’s interview with Darla Ashton, an Assistive technology Coordinator, Instructional Specialist, and BCBA with Carmel Clay Schools in Indiana! Darla and Chris discuss topics in AAC related to the question, “What do you know now that you didn’t know 10 years ago?” Darla discusses her district’s journey to determine what AAC program to use, Darla’s move away from the “expert m...

This week, we share an amazing interview with Nanny Aut! Nanny Aut is an amazing autistic blogger and advocate who created Autistic Village , a group of blogs with contributions from autistic people around the world. Nanny Aut shares about their experience being diagnosed with autism as an adult, being told autistic people “can’t be teachers” (as they were training to be a teacher), how we can bet...

This week, Chris and Rachel get the opportunity to interview the amazing LJ Seiff! LJ is a 14 year old boy with cerebral palsy and cortical visual impairment, which impact his ability to speak intelligibly. LJ shares about his AAC journey and some of the things that he wishes were done in the classroom more, like giving him more wait time to respond or asking multiple choice questions, since an AA...

This week, we share Part 2 of Chris’s conversation with Kristina Edie (SLP), Erica Sauer (Director of Special Programs), Joy Mockbee (OT), and Bernadette Wiley (PT/AAC) with Hancock County Schools in West Virginia. They continue to talk with Chris about the Specific Language System First approach and how it might work for their district, including how to choose the “tier 1/2” device that you give...

This week, we share Part 1 of Chris’s conversation with Kristina Edie (SLP), Erica Sauer (Director of Special Programs), Joy Mockbee (OT), and Bernadette Wiley (PT/AAC) with Hancock County Schools in West Virginia. They talk about the AAC journey their district has gone on that led them to asking Chris to help them understand the Specific Language System First approach and how it might work for th...

In this episode of Talking with Tech, Chris interviews Bruce Alter, a pediatric Physical Therapist and AT Consultant with the Tigard-Tualatin School District in Oregon. Bruce has a long history working with technology, including as a user; he was an early adopter of assistive technology in school to support his challenges with dyslexia. Bruce and Chris’s discussion focuses on artificial intelligin...

This week, Rachel and Chris interview Noah Callan, a 25-year-old disability and inclusion advocate who is a full-time AAC user. Noah is also the AAC & Technology Coordinator at Kids+ in Australia. Noah shares about his AAC journey, including some of the changes he has made over the years, such as going from switch access scanning to using an eye gaze camera with Gridpad 12 . Noah also shares some...

This week on Talking with Tech, Chris and Rachel discuss some of their takeaways from the Assistive Technology Industry Association Conference 2023. For those not familiar, ATIA holds a conference in Florida each year that focuses on assistive technology. Chris has attended and presented at ATIA for years, and Rachel has presented each of the last two years. Chris and Rachel touch on many of the t...

This week, Rachel interviews Marcella, the mother of an autistic boy, about the journey Marcella went through to give her son access to high-tech AAC. Marcella previously reached out to Rachel for a coaching call because she was not getting a positive response about AAC when meeting with local SLPs. Marcella decided to take Rachel’s AAC Ally course and started supporting her son’s language develop...

This week, Rachel interviews Dr. Theresa Bartolotta, an SLP who is a parent to Lisa, a young girl with Rett syndrome. Dr. Bartolotta  is co-author of the recently published Rett Syndrome Communication Guidelines and serves as consultant on communication to the International Rett Syndrome Foundation (ISRF). Dr. Bartolotta shares about putting together the Rett Syndrome Communication Guidelines, her...

This week, Rachel has a coaching call with Sarah Lockhart, an SLP and host of the SLP Happy Hour podcast! They discuss a case study of a 5 year old nonspeaking boy who uses an AAC device to communicate. Sarah and Rachel discuss concerns that he is “stuck at requesting”, since he typically only makes requests during therapy. Rachel shares how we can lean into those requests and elicit communication...

This week, Chris and Rachel forgo the normal interview format to discuss some of the many thoughts that Chris put together during his recent trip to Disney World, including the need for training Disney Castmembers about ablest language, the need for sensory safe experiences on loud rides, using google images to translate foreign languages, and more!    🔑 Chris discusses the “spoon theory” from a...