This page contains resources, announcements, guest blogs, essays, videos, and other stuff. Come back often!
Leer en español How we Communicate our Culture September 15 through October 15 is National Hispanic Heritage Month, a month-long celebration to recognize and honor the diverse cultures, histories, and experiences of Hispanic Americans in the United States. (The terms Hispanic and Latinx are not entirely interchangeable, but some…
Read in English Como Comunicamos Nuestra Cultura Del 15 de septiembre al 15 de octubre es el Mes Nacional de la Herencia Hispana, una celebración de un mes para reconocer y honrar las diversas culturas, historias y experiencias de los hispanoamericanos en los Estados Unidos. (Los términos hispano y…
CommunicationFIRST Celebrates Disability Voting Rights Week with REV UP “Vote as if your life depends on it … because it does.” Justin Dart, father of the Americans with Disabilities Act September 12-16, 2022, marks Disability Voting Rights Week. Disability Voting Rights Week is a nonpartisan initiative of the…
Leer en español Please join us in welcoming our new Chair and Program Associates We are pleased to announce that, effective August 1, 2022, Jordyn Zimmerman, MEd (she/her), is the new Chair of CommunicationFIRST’s Board of Directors. We thank India Ochs, JD, MPA (she/her), for her critical leadership during…
Guest Blog by Tuttleturtle I am an AAC user. I am also queer and trans. My AAC is part of my gender presentation. I have also never seen an AAC system represent someone like me. Even so, I’m a privileged AAC user. I’ve had access to education that taught…
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…
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…
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…
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…