C?r Doyle:

I wish to make a few points about augmentative and alternative communication, AAC. As Nem correctly said, we need to be able to provide a range of options for people. Not many people are aware of how hard it is even to get access to any type of support for AAC use for a child or adult who is autistic or has other conditions that may benefit from it. If a child receives assistive technology via a school getting the grant, that technology must stay in the school unless the child gets a special exemption. All of a sudden, this barrier means children only are given access to their voice in school. I am part of a Facebook group where people have posted that this AAC app is on sale this week or this iPod is on sale because people are waiting until April for autism awareness month for the AAC equipment to go on sale so they can actually afford it. That is not acceptable.

Many adults, like me, who use it only have their primary phone, which is not best practice. Best practice would be to have a dedicated AAC device. In situations where people are not supposed to have a phone with them, all of a sudden they are left without a voice. When in hospital, I was in a part of the hospital where phones were not permitted and I could not speak that day. All of a sudden, I was getting wheeled around the hospital to different wards because they could not figure out where I was supposed to be because I could not have a voice, purely because of not being able to have my phone in there.

It is not good enough to say we will train people if we do not give people access to alternative communication. It is our right to be able to express and communicate and we need to provide people with that. There are too many barriers when it comes to this type of stuff. Non-speaking members of our community are among some of the most marginalised members. We need to figure out societally how to ensure people's voices are heard regardless of how those voices are done.

As speakers, we take small things for granted, like having an Irish accent. I have non-speaking friends who think it is hilarious because they only speak in an American accent because the AAC apps do not provide an Irish accent. There is a lovely group of people, I believe in Galway, who are trying to develop an AAC for the Irish language. There are children who are not able to learn Irish because they do not have access to the Irish language as an AAC user. I love the Irish language and it saddens me that even when I am having a non-speaking day, I cannot use my usual "Go raibh maith agat" or whatever. Even my name, Cír, is a terrible thing to try to pronounce on an AAC app. There are all these little barriers that we take for granted as speakers. We cannot keep overlooking them, especially when we are not providing non-speakers with access to communication without it being funded out of their pocket at great expense to them.