Perspectives

Thanks to a generous two-year grant from the Ford Foundation, we are looking to expand our team and advance our mission to achieve transformative change for people who cannot rely on speech alone to be heard and understood! Please see the job advertisement here: https://communicationfirst.org/job-openings/. People of color, AAC users,…

Did you know that federal and state governments in the United States do not regularly count people with speech disabilities, even though they count people with the other two main types of communication disabilities — hearing and vision? It is very difficult to design and measure the success of policies…

We are devastated that there is a need for such a resource, but CommunicationFIRST is humbled to partner with The Nora Project, Teaching is Intellectual, and the Autistic Self Advocacy Network in the creation and sharing of this free, K-12 easy-read resource on school shootings: English version / Spanish version.…

Grant Blasko, a nonspeaking autistic augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) user and member of CommunicationFIRST’s Advisory Council, expressed the following reactions the day after the US Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) held its first meeting in years dedicated to the communication support needs of nonspeaking autistic people. A video recording…

CommunicationFIRST was one of five entities and individuals invited to deliver three-minute “oral” public comments to the US Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) on April 14, 2022, before the IACC’s first session in years devoted to the topic of the communication support needs of autistic people. CommunicationFIRST’s Policy Director, Bob…

The following is the text of CommunicationFIRST Board Member Jordyn Zimmerman’s invited remarks to the US Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) on April 14, 2022. The remarks were invited as part of the IACC’s first session in years focused on the communication support needs of autistic people. Jordyn was the…

Grant Blasko is a member of CommunicationFIRST’s Advisory Council. He is 19 years old, autistic, a full-time user of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), and is a student in the state of Washington. Grant has collaborated with numerous institutions on issues relating to both autism and meaningful communication and educational…

The poem “Running from the Ecological Wave” was written by CommunicationFIRST Board member Lateef McLeod, who lives in Oakland, California. It was first performed as part of Sins Invalid‘s October 2020 show, “We Love Like Barnacles: Crip Lives in Climate Chaos.” In March 2022, the poem won the Wynn Newhouse…