Breaking the Speech Barrier

Book excerpt: In school, but "locked out" 13 youth, each with fewer than 10 productive words to use to build their relationship with families, teachers, and friends. That is, until they were introduced to the System for Augmenting Language, or SAL. In a wonderful meshing of science and the real world, this remarkable book chronicles the process of language learning through augmented means for people who have significant difficulty acquiring spoken language. In engaging storytelling style, speech-language pathologist Romski and psychologist Sevcik describe how they carried their research from language lab to school and in the process changed the lives of the youth to whom they brought the SAL. A replicable system that fosters naturalistic exchanges between communicative partners using electronic speech-output devices, the SAL extends the power of communication to children otherwise locked out of the world around them. With a new level of vocabulary mastery, students enjoy not only enhanced communicative skills but also higher judgments of competence from both familiar and unfamiliar observers. One award-winning SAL application, Project FACTT (Facilitating Augmentative Communication Through Technology) provides innovative augmentative communication services to school-age children with severe disabilities and is described in detail.