International AAC Awareness Month: Do's and Don'ts of AAC Poster

October is International AAC Awareness Month! People all over the world are working to raise awareness of AAC and underline the importance of communication - for everyone.

Back in May, David Niemeijer from AssistiveWare and I did a presentation at the AGOSCI Conference on the Do's and Don'ts of Implementing Real Communication Through AAC. As part of International AAC Awareness Month, we are sharing a poster version of some of the information from the presentation.

Just click on the poster to download it - and please share it far and wide.  We really hope to not only raise awareness of AAC but also of good practice with AAC.

If you want other one page visuals for AAC Awareness you might also like Lauren Schwartz Ender's AAC Bootcamp Poster or the National Joint Committee's Communication Bill of Rights made up as a visual by Kate Ahern.

Those of you interested in further resources and materials for raising AAC Awareness should check out the fabulous resources shared on PrAACtical AAC.  I love the Facebook and Twitter banners and hope to see social media decked out in AAC 🙂

You might also want to consider running an AAC Awareness event at your school or workplace or somewhere else! Scope in Victoria, Australia, encourages people to run a Silent Morning Tea (edited to add: this resource is no longer available). Register to get a link to a kit to help you run your own morning tea. ISAAC International has a page dedicated to the month with ideas from different sources. Personally, I also love spending a day or two using AAC myself - it not only raises awareness but also greatly increases my skill at using (and therefore modelling) AAC.

And finally, the fabulous AAC Family Friday is running again through October on the Uncommon Sense Blog - I enjoyed it so much last year and I'm happy to see it is happening again!

Happy AAC Awareness Month everyone!!