Active Participation in Life

The National Joint Committee for the Communication Needs of Persons with Severe Disabilities defines communication as

“Any act by which one person gives to or receives from another person information about that person's needs, desires, perceptions, knowledge or affective states. Communication may be intentional or unintentional, may involve conventional or unconventional signals, may take linguistic or nonlinguistic forms, and may occur through spoken or other modes.”

Implicit in this scholarly definition is the message that communication is the essence of active participation in the activities of learning and living, and that communication takes many forms. In this section we will take a brief look at: Communication Communication Functions - The Communication Bill of Rights Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) AAC Tools and Strategies Important Issues in Selecting AAC Tools Building Communication Competence

Communication – The Essence of Active Participation in Life

The ability to communicate effectively and efficiently is a complex physical and cognitive activity that is highly prized in almost every human society. People whose ability to communicate has proceeded through a typical series of development steps tend to perceive the usual linguistic forms of communication – talking and listening – as something that just “happens” over time as children develop and grow. In this standard (but remarkable) situation, they often do not think a lot about how much time and energy and experience go into learning to communicate effectively, not only with words, but also with non-linguistic means such as gestures, symbols, and others.

When we take the time to think about it, we realize that parents and others talk constantly to babies long before they have any expectation that babies will talk back to them. Whether or not they think the baby understands the words, they talk about what they are doing to, for, and with the baby – about eating, bathing, changing, going for walks, playing peek-a-boo, and many other activities of daily life – supplying labels for every action, object and feeling that comes into their sphere of perception. In this way, others in the lives of the babies are supplying language–the essential seed of communication–that young child will soon use to communicate with others. Language and the ability to communicate include a whole system of natural tools – spoken words, actions, gestures, and reactions that give meaning and value to the act of communication.

For children and adults with communication disorders – and there are quite a range of them with physical, cognitive, and sometimes emotional origins – difficulties with speaking can become a huge barrier to active participation in the common, everyday activities of living and learning in communities with others. While the inability to speak clearly and fluently certainly contributes substantially to this barrier, the obstacle is frequently made worse by a critical misunderstanding typical of potential communication partners: it is not typically understood that not being able to say something is not at all the same as having nothing to say.