Alternative and augmentative communication technology can empower individuals with delayed or difficult-to-understand speech or conditions like cerebral palsy and autism to express themselves and connect with others. Clackamas Education Service District offers short-term loans of AAC devices and applications for students to trial, ranging from low technology tools, like paper word boards or eye gaze boards, to high technology tools, like specialized computers, tablet apps and voice output communication aids.
Using AAC can be life-changing for people with disabilities or those who are learning verbal language, but the users, their providers and their family need to know how to use them effectively. And the more advanced the technology is, the more there is to learn.
That’s where Avital Elyazam — one of Clackamas ESD’s assistive technology specialists — comes in.
Avital coordinates our AT and provides training on a wide range of AAC systems to our speech-language pathologists, teachers and educational assistants in our early intervention/early childhood special education department.
Avital is a trained speech-language pathologist who worked extensively with AT in her previous position at Willamette ESD. Her experience with and enthusiasm for the technology made her a natural fit for our assistive technology specialist position.
“Alternative and augmentative communication systems, I think, are super intimidating early on,” Avital acknowledges. “I’ve really enjoyed seeing people get excited about how they can use AAC with their students and become more confident in using and modeling the systems. You have to be confident to use AAC to teach your students and to introduce and model the use of AAC to their families.”
Since joining Clackamas ESD in the fall of 2021, Avital has helped staff become more familiar with the AT available and more fluent in using these tools.
”We’re being a lot more thoughtful about how we use technology to support students, and staff feel supported and more comfortable using the technology consistently,” EI/ECSE Program Coordinator Kimberly Long notes. We’ve always had iPads that staff could use with students, but their use was based on staff’s comfort level with the devices. Many more kids are now using assistive technology thanks to Avital’s efforts to make the devices much more user-friendly.”
As a result, in the 2021-22 school year, Clackamas ESD issued over 75 trial devices with communication apps — more than twice as many as the previous school year.
“The one-on-one work I’ve done with our staff is reflected in how well our direct providers are using the technology with their students,” Avital beams.
Because the brain is more receptive to learning language early in life, introducing students to AAC in early education increases the likelihood that the student and their families will adopt the technology into their daily lives.
“Teaching the students and parents how to use AAC at a younger age will have a huge positive impact on these kids in the long term,” says Avital. “Parents are overwhelmed with joy to hear their young kids share ideas using AAC that they couldn’t have expressed using spoken language. It is so exciting to see how in providing assistive technology, these kids aren’t left behind.”
