Kelly Autism Program offering AAC devices to community

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – New devices are now being offered by the Suzanne Vitale Clinical Education Complex to help those with speech impairments in the community.

“We now have something right here at WKU that could be accessed by our students, by our faculty and staff, and then by community members too… parents, caregivers, local therapists and teachers. We just think this is something really special and just a real gem of an educational resource right here in our community,” Kelly Autism Program director Caroline Alexander Hudson says.

Through a new grant from WHAS Crusade for Children, staff at the CEC are now able to offer AAC, or augmentative and alternative communication, devices.

“We have tons of new equipment for members of the community to try out. So that could be AAC users, teachers, students. We have Western students that can check things out as well… and so that’s just to get them exploring and trying out new devices before they ever make a commitment to actually purchasing one themselves,” graduate assistant Regan Gregory says.

There are two different types of devices: low tech and high tech. They’re very different from each other.

“We have things from low tech devices to high tech which our low tech devices are unchanging. They’re boards with symbols that stay the same… and then our high tech devices have dynamic displays. So those will change, and you can hold a lot more vocabulary in those,” Gregory says.

The main reason the CEC is offering these is because of the need they’ve seen in the community.

“Some of these devices and these tools are really inaccessible for children and people that are getting into the world of AAC. So it means a lot to me to be able to share this resource with the community and allow people to come try out our devices before they make that commitment to getting one themselves,” Gregory says.

The work couldn’t be done without the help of Crusade for Children, which helps the entire state, not just one part.

“We are feeling their benefit right here in south central Kentucky… and this just could not have happened without their support,” Hudson says.