The National Joint Committee for the Communication Needs of People with Severe Disabilities (NJC) reviewed literature regarding practices for people with severe disabilities in order to update guidance provided in documents originally published in 1992. Changes in laws, definitions, and policies that affect communication attainments by persons with severe disabilities are presented, along with guidance regarding assessment and intervention practices. A revised version of the Communication Bill of Rights, a powerful document that describes the communication rights of all individuals, including those with severe disabilities is included in this article. The information contained within this article is intended to be used by professionals, family members, and individuals with severe disabilities to inform and advocate for effective communication services and opportunities.

This study investigated the relative engagement potential of four types of electronic screen media (ESM): animated video, video of self, video of a familiar person engaged with an immersive virtual reality (VR) game, and immersion of self in the VR game. Forty-two students with autism, varying in age and expressive communication ability, were randomly assigned to the experimental conditions. Gaze duration and vocalization served as dependent measures of engagement. The results reveal differential responding across ESM, with some variation related to the engagement metric employed. Preferences for seeing themselves on the screen, as well as for viewing the VR scenarios, emerged from the data. While the study did not yield definitive data about the relative engagement potential of ESM alternatives, it does provide a foundation for future research, including guidance related to participant profiles, stimulus characteristics, and data coding challenges.

This literature review was conducted to evaluate the current state of evidence supporting communication interventions for individuals with severe disabilities. Authors reviewed 116 articles published between 1987 and 2007 in refereed journals meeting three criteria: (a) described a communication intervention, (b) involved one or more participants with severe disabilities, and (c) addressed one or more areas of communication performance. Many researchers failed to report treatment fidelity or to assess basic aspects of intervention effects including generalization, maintenance, and social validity. The evidence reviewed indicates that 96% of the studies reported positive changes in some aspects of communication. These findings support the provision of 1 We would like to thank both Youngzie Lee, University of Virginia, and R. Michael Barker, Georgia State University, for their help with the analyses. We also thank the National Center on Evidence-Based Practice in Communication Disorders of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association for their assistance in conducting the systematic literature search.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Martha E. Snell, Curry School of Education, University of Virginia, P. O. Box 400273, Charlottesville, VA, 22904-4273., Snell@virginia.edu. NIH Public AccessAuthor Manuscript Am J Intellect Dev Disabil. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2011 February 8. Published in final edited form as: Am J Intellect Dev Disabil. 2010 September ; 115(5): 364-380. doi:10.1352/1944. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript communication intervention to persons with severe disabilities. Gaps in the research were reported with recommendations for future research. Keywords communication; mental retardation; severe disabilities; intellectual and developmental disabilities; autism; multiple disabilities; literature review; intervention The ability to communicate effectively with others is essential for good quality of life. Individuals who have severe disabilities include those with severe to profound intellectual disability, autism, deaf-blindness, and multiple-disabilities. For these individuals, the ability to communicate can be substantially compromised. The question of whether and how this ability to communicate can be improved through intervention was the focus of a national consensus conference convened by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs, (OSEP) and its Technical Assistance Development System (TADS) in 1985 (OSEP/TADS, 1985). In addition to producing a number of consensus statements, these 1985 conferees called for the formation of "an interagency task force" to disseminate guidelines for the "development and enhancement of functional communication abilities" in individuals with severe disabilities.This recommendation resulted in the establishment of a "National Joint Committee for the Communicative Needs of Persons with Severe Disabilities" (NJC) in 1986. The present review was con...

This study examined the conditions under which action representations - presented in both static and dynamic formats - were most readily identified. Preschoolers without disabilities selected graphics corresponding to a spoken word from a computerized four-choice array. Although pre-tests confirmed that the children had all of the stimulus words in their lexical repertoires, their demonstration of that knowledge when the stimuli were presented in graphical form was less robust. The children were generally more challenged by the static representations than the dynamic ones, and their performances were most accurate with the most realistic dynamic representations. A developmental effect was noted, as children's symbol identification became more accurate across the range of representational forms as they got older.

This study examined the effectiveness of matrix-training procedures in teaching action + object utterances in both the receptive and expressive language modalities. The subjects were 4 developmentally delayed preschool boys who failed to produce spontaneous, functional two-word utterances. A multiple baseline design across responses with a multiple probe technique was employed. Subjects were taught 4-6 of 48 receptive and 48 expressive responses. Acquisition of a word combination rule was facilitated by the use of familiar lexical items, whereas subsequent acquisition of new lexical knowledge was enhanced by couching training in a previously trained word combination pattern. Although receptive knowledge was not sufficient for the demonstration of corresponding expressive performance for most of the children, only minimal expressive training was required to achieve this objective. For most matrix items, subjects responded receptively before they did so expressively. For 2 subjects, when complete receptive recombinative generalization had not been achieved, expressive training facilitated receptive responding. The results of this study elucidate benefits to training one linguistic aspect (lexical item, word combination pattern) at a time to maximize generalization in developmentally delayed preschoolers.

A study was conducted to train a five-year-old, severely handicapped boy to activate an adapted battery-operated and electronically controlled toy. To activate the toy the student was required to manually depress a Zygo tread switch which, while depressed, maintained activation of the toy. During the baseline condition the student was provided only with a verbal prompt (and the occurrence of switch activation was recorded). During three subsequent intervention phases verbal prompting only, and verbal and physical prompting conditions were alternated between daily morning and afternoon sessions. Training involved the use of verbal and three different types of physical prompts. Prompts were systematically withdrawn in two consecutive phases after the student's switch activation increased sharply. In the final condition a return to baseline (verbal prompts only) was instituted. The study yielded several interesting findings: (a) the physical prompting procedure was effective in rapidly establishing the response; (b) the response was later also performed when the student was given only a verbal prompt; (c) gradual withdrawal of physical prompting did not result in a concomitant decrease in the behavior, and (d) the behavior maintained during the final condition in which only verbal prompts were provided. The study indicates that systematic prompting, prompt fading, and the use of electronically mediated devices can be effective in establishing purposeful communicative and leisure behaviors in low functioning severely handicapped students. Implications are discussed for the widespread applicability of this technology.

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