by Grace Clark, PhD, SLP (speech-language pathologist); NWACS board member
reading time: 4 minutes
This is a plain-language summary of a journal article. The article is one of 21 articles in a special issue of the AAC journal (Volume 41, Issue 3, 2025). All the articles are written or co-written by AAC users. The articles are free to read. Plain-language summaries of research are important for accessibility. Providing summaries in plain language helps make complex information easier to read. This helps to better understand and put the research into practice.
Summary of: Overcoming barriers to literacy for individuals who need or use AAC: lived experiences, key research findings, and future directions by Light, et al. (2025)
Literacy Learning and People Who Need or Use AAC
This powerful article discusses why literacy is so important for people who need or use AAC (augmentative-alternative communication). It also talks about factors that prevent them from acquiring literacy skills.
Let’s first talk about why literacy (reading and writing) is so important. With the advent of social media and texting, literacy now plays an even greater role in our lives. Through literacy we
text friends and family,
post messages on social media,
and connect with people across the globe.
With literacy, AAC users can communicate anything imaginable. Without it, their communication may be limited to the symbol set on their device. Zimmerman (2025) describes how in her lived experience, an inability to fully express herself led to trauma in her life. Picture-based systems do not match the world around those who use or need AAC. Thus, they may be a source of isolation (Blasko, 2025). Picture- and symbol-based AAC systems are authentic, valid communication. At the same time, literacy skills open additional opportunities for communication. For some people, typing or spelling becomes a useful tool. For others, symbol-based communication remains their most effective and powerful voice. Both are authentic communication. The key is ensuring each person has access to the tools that work for them.
This article briefly mentions intrinsic factors that may inhibit literacy development. Intrinsic means inside the person. Literacy learning can be impacted by
vision,
hearing,
working memory,
motor skills,
language skills,
and world knowledge.
But these are not reasons to abandon literacy instruction. We just need to think outside the box.
The external barriers are the heart of this article. External means outside the person. Light and colleagues (2025) go in depth about 3 external barriers:
lack of effective instruction,
lack of trained service providers,
and lack of AAC systems that support literacy skills.
Lack of Effective Instruction
A lot of educators have low expectations of people who use or need AAC. This leads to literacy being a low priority. Also, most approaches to teaching literacy require responses that are not accessible to people who use AAC. Many educators believe that sight word tasks (e.g., memorizing common words without learning how to sound them out such as ‘the’) is the only approach appropriate for those who use or need AAC. We have 15 years of research saying otherwise. We now know that we can teach AAC users literacy skills using phonics-based instruction (matching spoken sounds with letters) with a few adaptations. There are at least 3 literacy programs developed for those who cannot rely on speech alone to be heard and understood:
Accessible Literacy Learning (Light & McNaughton, 2009),
Early Reading Skills Builder (Ahlgrim-Delzell et al., 2016),
and Getting Reading to Read (Erickson & Hanser, 2008).
Research says those who use or need AAC can learn phonological awareness skills if
a) given a few targets at a time,
b) given consistent practice,
c) given direct instruction, and
d) given the opportunity to apply new skills in meaningful ways.
Adaptations, such as providing pictures, text, multiple choice, letters, or other ways of responding are also an important feature.
Lack of Trained Service Providers
Many speech-language pathologists (SLPs) do not learn about teaching literacy skills when in graduate school (Caron et al., 2018). Many times, school districts have paraprofessionals provide literacy instruction. They often have no or minimal training to do this. The good news is that with educator training, we see improvements. Caron and colleagues (2022) provided an online training to educators on teaching letter sounds. The educators got better at teaching and saw improvements in their students’ skills.
Lack of AAC Systems that Support Literacy
To me, this was a key takeaway from the article. Blasko (2025) writes about how there is a mismatch between the world around an AAC user and the system they are provided with when we use symbol-only systems. This leads to isolation because the external world does not match the symbol world. Very few children who use or need AAC transition from symbol-based systems to text-based systems by the time they graduate. Until recently, there hasn’t been a way to smoothly transition from a symbol-based system to a text-based system (Zimmerman, 2025). Transition to literacy (T2L) technologies are changing that. T2L-enabled software systems make the symbol disappear for a moment and replace that symbol with text. This technology is promising for transitioning AAC users to text-based systems. Text-based systems allow for the creation of any message imaginable!
If you have the time, I encourage you to read the whole article. It is full of impactful quotes from AAC users and parents of AAC users. These quotes may shift how you think about literacy for those who use or need AAC. It’s important to recognize that all forms of AAC — whether symbol-based, spelling, or text-based — allow people to express original thoughts. We should never assume one is ‘more real’ than another. Literacy support should expand possibilities, not erase or devalue existing communication. Did you read it? Let me know your thoughts!
Citation:
Light, J., Holyfield, C., McNaughton, D., Nieder, D., & Preece, J. (2025). Overcoming barriers to literacy for individuals who need or use AAC: lived experiences, key research findings, and future directions. Augmentative and Alternative Communication, 1-12.
Access full article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07434618.2025.2502032
