With mixed feelings, we share the news that CommunicationFIRST’s co-founder Bob Williams is retiring.
![[Image: Bob Williams wears a plaid cap and glasses. He sits in a powerchair with a microphone near his speech-generating device. Behind him is the US Capitol building. Image credit: Alison Chandra.]](https://communicationfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Bob-Williams-Protect-Medicaid-Remarks-by-Alison-Chandra-1-1600x2133.jpg)
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.
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.
Read CommunicationFIRST’s statement in response to the planned elimination of the Administration for Community Living.
Medicaid is at risk! Your elected representatives need to hear how losing your Medicaid waiver would change your life. This Policy Advocacy for AAC Users toolkit provides some tips.
Share how Medicaid cuts would hurt you or those around you who need Medicaid to stay in the community. We put together some resources from our amazing partners to make this easy!
In celebration of Bill of Rights Day, Bob Williams reflects on the power free expression holds for those of us who cannot rely on speech alone to be heard and understood.
Bob Williams’s Literacy and AAC presentation was first given at the Future of AAC Research Summit on May 14, 2024, in Arlington, Virginia.
CommunicationFIRST held a brainstorming session to begin to identify some of the “good, bad, and ugly” ways technologies can uniquely impact people with speech-related disabilities.
CommunicationFIRST publicly recruited a diverse group of AAC users who were willing to be interviewed on camera about their priorities for AAC research.
In a first-of-its-kind event held May 13-14, 2024, people with speech-related disabilities from around the U.S. told senior federal officials and researchers how future research dollars should be prioritized.
On December 19, 2023, CommunicationFIRST asked the US Census Bureau to begin formally counting the estimated 5 million people in…
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 7, 2023 Contact: Tauna Szymanski & Bob Williams at info@communicationfirst.org, 202-556-0573 WASHINGTON, D.C. — CommunicationFIRST,…
It’s gratifying when policymakers #LISTEN! On November 21, 2022, CommunicationFIRST submitted comments to the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living,…