Selecting AAC Tools and Strategies for Interactions with Teachers and Students at Special Needs School for Children with Intellectual Disabilities

摘要

Successful communication between children with complex communication needs and their partners often relies on selecting appropriate augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) tools and strategies to fit their opportunity. Mobile apps are powerful AAC tools for presenting visual aids with synthesized voice. However, special needs school teachers sometimes do not use these apps actively even they recognize the usefulness. The purpose of this study is to examine the teacher's selection process of AAC tools and strategies at special needs schools for children with intellectual disabilities. We had developed STalk2 mobile app and unstructured focus group interviews were conducted at the end of 8-11 months of STalk2 trial use. The results suggest that teachers select AAC tools and strategies for interaction with their students based on characteristics of communication tools and strategies, environments, and/or knowledge and experience on the use of communication tools and strategies.