This page contains resources, announcements, guest blogs, essays, videos, and other stuff. Come back often!
Disability advocate, AAC user, and fashionista, Marisa Conners, says her Medicaid HCBS waiver ensures her “needs and preferences are respected,” and it enables her to advocate and create in ways that align with her communication style. Learn how in her guest blog.
The Policy Advocacy 101 Webinar invited a panel of policy experts who are part of our community to discuss the ways they advocate for change.
We’re still processing the crushing news about the passing of CommunicationFIRST friend and Advisory Council member Alice Wong. We were made better by her work. Read about some of her AAC and communication-disability-related activism.
With mixed feelings, we share the news that CommunicationFIRST’s co-founder Bob Williams is retiring.
During the last week of July 2025, Caring Across Generations, CommunicationFIRST, and other partners held a 60-Hour Protect Medicaid Vigil. This vigil showed Congress the huge importance of Medicaid to many constituents with disabilities and their allies. During the vigil, CommunicationFIRST’s Co-Founder Bob Williams gave the following personal remarks.
We interviewed our own Dr. Lateef McLeod about his dissertation on peer mentorship between AAC users. He showed the importance of offering mentorship by us, for us, and co-created mentorship spaces accessible to people who use a variety of forms of AAC.
The journal of Augmentative and Alternative Communication published papers from our Future of AAC Research Summit! Nearly all of the 21 papers are authored or co-authored by someone who uses AAC. Access these papers and watch many of the authors present now.
This webinar first aired on October 15, 2024, and begins with a screening of CommunicationFIRST’s latest See Us, Hear Us film featuring Bob Williams. It is followed by a discussion among CommunicationFIRST Policy Director Bob Williams, Forest Haven Institution survivors Ricardo Thornton and Donna Thornton, and advocate and ally Rebecca Salon.
Earlier this week, Virginia adopted its first law expressly addressing augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). Read our summary and statement of the law here.