This page contains resources, announcements, guest blogs, essays, videos, and other stuff. Come back often!
Pancho Ramirez is CommunicationFIRST’s newest Board member. As a Mexican immigrant farmworker, he acquired his speech disability in 2003 at age 20 after a car accident led to a brain stem stroke, and has lived in nursing homes and hospitals in northern California ever since. While living in an…
The U.S. Government‘s Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) helps determine how federal government money related to autism is spent. Although CommunicationFIRST is a cross-disability organization, a large percentage of our constituency is autistic. We have been encouraged to submit comments to help inform the 2021-2022 IACC Strategic Plan, and…
by endever* corbin This guest blog is adapted from a presentation given at the August 2021 Reinventing Quality conference. I’m endever*, I go by they/them pronouns, and I’m a mostly nonspeaking autistic self-advocate. I focus a lot of my writing and presentations on my experiences with AAC-augmentative and alternative…
On November 5, 2021, CommunicationFIRST’s Policy Director, Bob Williams, submitted written testimony to urge the DC Council (Washington, DC’s legislative body) to quickly pass a bill that would eliminate a requirement for IQ tests to be used in deciding who qualifies to receive developmental disability services. The Developmental Disability…
On November 10, 2021, CommunicationFIRST hosted an opportunity for AAC users to interview Jordyn Zimmerman about the new documentary This Is Not About Me, featuring Jordyn and her educational experiences with and without access to robust augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). CommunicationFIRST’s Policy Director (and full-time AAC user), Bob Williams,…
We are thrilled and humbled to share that our film LISTEN: Made by and with Nonspeaking Autistics won the Zukor Award at the 2021 Astoria Film Festival last weekend! The Zukor Award is awarded to a film that brings positive attention to an underrepresented topic or group. Congratulations to…
On October 13, 2021, CommunicationFIRST is excited to join with the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism, and AssistiveWare in celebrating the public release of This Is Not About Me, a documentary featuring one of our Board members, Jordyn Zimmerman. Although the film tells Jordyn’s story,…
Clarissa Kripke with Senate Judiciary Constitution Subcommittee Chair Senator Richard Blumenthal. Photo credit: Tauna Szymanski On September 28, 2021, three CommunicationFIRST Board members and four participants in our August 19 webinar on Guardianships and AAC Users submitted testimony for the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution’s hearing titled…
Last month, CommunicationFIRST responded to the White House Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) Request for Information about how to make the US government’s policies and work more equitable. Our comments include 12 recommendations. The first three recommendations ask the government to begin counting people with speech-related disabilities, like…