Our sessions at ATIA 2026
I Can’t Imagine Teaching without This: Tools that Make Teaching Easier with AAC
Presenters: Erin Sheldon and Rachael Langley
Date: Thursday, January 29 | Time: 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM | Location: Miami
Busy teachers juggle so many demands and mandates, from teaching content to life skills, managing classrooms to monitoring progress. Modeling AAC for emergent AAC users is often one more demand that educators struggle to accomplish. This session builds on the insight that teachers embrace AAC when it saves time and makes their jobs easier, not harder. Come experience new AAC-like technologies that leverage the instructional power of dual coding, graphic visuals, graphic organizers, and a robust vocabulary. This hands-on session will demonstrate how we can make a teacher's job easier AND embed AAC in teaching to benefit all learners.
Leveling the Playing Field: Make Classroom Learning Easier with AAC
Presenters: Erin Sheldon and Rachael Langley
Date: Thursday, January 29 | Time: 2:15 PM - 3:15 PM | Location: Miami
Emergent AAC users are often spectators to learning in their classrooms. Their AAC is commonly reduced to a tool for labeling or choice-making. This hands-on session will demonstrate how we can transform AAC into a powerful tool for participation, thinking, and learning for all students - but especially our AAC learners. Come explore how a classroom of diverse learners can leverage graphic symbols, printed text, text-to-speech, and embodied cognition. Experience how new AAC-like technologies creates opportunities for students to expand vocabulary, learn literacy skills, and represent and engage in the curriculum in innovative new ways.
On Time AAC: Developmentally Appropriate Timing and Practices in AAC Access
Presenter: Lily Konyn
Date: Thursday, January 29 | Time: 4:30 PM - 5:30 PM | Location: Miami
Access to AAC for children younger than school age is often considered "early" AAC. This presentation shifts our perspective to understand that providing access to communication at the same time that typical peers are meeting language milestones is not "early", but "on-time", and is vital for full communication equity. Attendees will learn how on-time AAC provision requires multimodal AAC use to meet all the purposes of language in infancy and toddlerhood, and how it leverages the partner behaviors of adults interacting with young children to improve language outcomes.
Measuring Progress Among AAC Learners
Presenter: Rachael Langley
Date: Friday, January 30 | Time: 8:30 AM - 9:30 AM | Location: Miami
How do we know our strategies are working? Measuring progress with AAC learners is often one of the biggest challenges for therapists and educators. This session will explore ways to determine if our intervention strategies are consistently implemented and effective. Keeping the focus on learner engagement and language development, this session seeks to define the skills we want our learners to demonstrate, the indicators that the skill is being learned, and the ways we can measure that learning. We will also demonstrate innovative new tools that create new opportunities for AAC learners to show what they know.
Beyond Eligibility Criteria: Universal Approach to Power-based AAC in Education
Presenter: Kathryn Stowell
Date: Friday, January 30 | Time: 9:45 AM - 10:45 AM | Location: Miami
What happens when you give every student and teacher an iPad and communication app as part of their education? We will share the details of how CENMAC implemented power-based Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) across every classroom, and explore outcomes identified in relation to both students and teachers. What has been our overall learning, and what are the implications for the future provision of AAC? How might this universal approach contribute to improved language and literacy skills, and reduce barriers to education and social interaction?
Model Like You Mean It: Rethinking AAC Input for Meaningful Communication
Presenter: Amanda Hartmann
Date: Friday, January 30 | Time: 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM | Location: Miami
AAC modeling is essential- how we model matters. This workshop invites participants to reflect on current modeling practices and explore more effective, impactful strategies for communication. We’ll move beyond keyword modeling to focus on modeling complete, meaningful messages, and consider the influence of what we speak—or don’t speak—while modeling. Participants will learn how to support comprehension, engagement, and identity through practical modeling strategies. Through examples from everyday settings, participants will leave with a refreshed understanding of what AAC modeling looks like, sounds like, and feels like—so they can model in ways that support language and meaningful communication.
How AAC Can Support the Science of Reading
Presenters: Erin Sheldon, Rachael Langley, and Lily Konyn
Date: Friday, January 30 | Time: 2:15 PM - 3:15 PM | Location: Miami
An exciting shift in our field is the commitment to teach all students to read using approaches based in the science of how students learn. This hands-on session will demonstrate novel new uses and features of AAC to support explicit and systematic instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary. Specific to AAC learners, we will extend the Science of Reading into the broader science of language and literacy - how students learn to listen, speak, and write. Come explore how the next generation of AAC can help our students bridge from symbol-based AAC to text-based literate communication!
Use It Because It Works: Practical Tools to Increase AAC Use Through Engagement
Presenter: Amanda Hartmann
Date: Friday, January 30 | Time: 4:30 PM - 5:30 PM | Location: Miami
Do you wish the AAC users you support used their system more? Many SLPs do—but more prompting and compliance-based strategies often miss the mark. In this practical session, we’ll explore how to support AAC use through engagement, connection, and meaningful interaction. This workshop will share strategies that go beyond device access— focusing instead on helping AAC users express their personality and preferences. Participants will dive into practical tools, and real-life examples that emphasize language development, self advocacy, emotional connection, and purposeful communication. You'll leave with strategies to make AAC something that is not just used—but also valued.
Teach new words to all students: a year of structured AAC vocabulary instruction.
Presenters: Erin Sheldon and Rachael Langley
Date: Saturday, January 31 | Time: 8:30 AM - 9:30 AM | Location: Miami
Vocabulary instruction is challenging to differentiate in classrooms of students with diverse needs. How do we effectively model and teach core and basic words to early AAC learners, while expanding the receptive and expressive vocabularies of speaking students? Join this session as we introduce structured tools to scaffold vocabulary learning across a classroom for an entire school year. Experience a set of tools designed to introduce, teach, and practice vocabulary in a way that is meaningful to every learner in the classroom, integrating multiple components of robust vocabulary instruction while also teaching AAC skills to our most emergent students.
Matching to the intervention: AAC feature matching for emergent communicators
Presenters: Erin Sheldon and Willemijn Wetzels
Date: Saturday, January 31 | Time: 9:45 AM - 10:45 AM | Location: Miami
AAC feature matching often emphasizes the access needs of the AAC user. However, this focus can become restrictive with early users whose skills are still emerging and whose long-term AAC success heavily depends on the dosage and intensity of support they receive from communication partners. This session will describe how to broaden the scope of feature matching to ensure the AAC we select is the best match for the user, their partners, their environment, and the demands of the intervention (such as AAC modelling) our users require. Come explore a structured approach to ensuring long-term AAC adoption and success.
To Be Heard and Understood: Practical Strategies for AAC Language Growth
Presenter: Amanda Hartmann
Date: Saturday, January 31 | Time: 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM | Location: Miami
Supporting people who use AAC to develop robust language skills is essential if they are to be truly heard and understood. This interactive workshop will focus on receptive language and engagement as powerful starting points for communication growth. Through practical examples, demonstrations, and hands-on activities, participants will explore meaningful ways to build language—beyond just requesting, vocabulary lists or device programming. The session will highlight real-world strategies to help AAC users expand their expressive language across everyday settings, making space for authentic communication. You’ll walk away with ready-to-use ideas and a toolkit for supporting language development in AAC users.
