AAC users deserve more than crumbs
This is a transcript of Dr. Alyssa Hillary Zisk's keynote, delivered at ISAAC’s Virtual Conference 2025 Opening Ceremonies.
14 minute read
Alyssa Hillary Zisk's articles
Overview
AAC and stimming – understanding the role of stimming in communication
Some Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) users repeat the same motions, like pressing the same button over and over on their device. But what does that mean? In this blog, we will further explore stimming and its relationship with AAC.
5 minute read
Understanding why AAC users repeatedly tap buttons and practical strategies for support
The Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) community often asks for our help with strategies for people who tap buttons on the AAC over and over. What might be the reason for this tapping? What purpose might it serve? And most importantly, what actions should we take or avoid?
5 minute read
Busting AAC myths for good
There are many things we now know to be true about Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC)—both from research and from AAC users’ lived experiences. However, even with the research showing us certain things to be true, certain myths persist in the AAC community.
7 minute read
Intermittent, unreliable, insufficient, and expensive speech
There is a lot of space between being nonspeaking and being able to consistently meet all of our communication needs using socially expected amounts of speech. Many autistic people, including me, live in that space and use AAC to communicate at least some of the time.
5 minute read
Give your AAC app more personality with Apple's Personal Voice
At the heart of every adaptation at AssistiveWare is a singular goal: enhancing the experience of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) users and communication partners. Leveraging Apple's latest innovations, we're excited to integrate transformative features into our suite of AAC apps.
2 minute read
What AAC terminology should I use? - insights from a community survey
Words can shape perceptions. So, we asked what words people like, use, dislike, or don’t understand related to AAC. Here we share the survey results and our recommendations on what words to use and what words to avoid.
11 minute read
How to talk about AAC and AAC users (according to them)
Words are the building blocks of language, and language is how we tell stories. It’s how we tell each other who we are. Words can shape perceptions—calling AAC a “clinical practice” paints a very different picture from saying AAC is “all the ways we communicate.”
19 minute read
Respecting privacy in AAC
Autism Acceptance Month challenges us to examine how we teach autonomy and privacy to people learning to use AAC. Alyssa Hillary Zisk is an Autistic graduate student in neuroscience, where they do AAC-related research. Their perspective on privacy and autonomy was so powerful that it needed its own blog, which they tell about in their own words here.
3 minute read