“I am irate over the notion of a committee of non-experts is trying to take away this form of communication. It seems like a personal vendetta, to be honest. I can’t understand what their motivation is except to stifle the voices of people with disabilities. This is where we are presently: the able-bodied deciding what’s best for us. I say enough to that historic oppression – your biases aren’t fooling anyone.”

“My fellow Autistic people who use a letterboard subject themselves to this same energy depletion and scrutiny because they are the first. Being open, being the first means we take some pretty big sacrifices beyond the scrutiny and judgement that impact our daily lives and rights as humans. Why would we subject ourselves to all of this? Because the real cruelty is returning to the days when potential was not recognized.”

“Being able to spell on a letter board has opened the world to her. She plans to attend college. She writes poetry. She is developing relationships – finally – with friends and family for the first time, at age 13.”

“To remove access to this method simply because you do not know how to dance would be as cruel as cutting out the tongue of anyone who sings because we dislike the music.”

“All 3 [CCC-SLPs] communicated with [our daughter] and documented in writing not only that [she] is spelling completely independent of influence, but clearly possesses language skills that exceed her chronological age. If ASHA had already condemned RPM as a teaching methodology, these specialists would likely never have given [her] a chance to even communicate with them.”

“Too often, the failed autistic speaker is blamed for the failure to speak because he is labeled as being too low functioning, too lazy, or too dumb to advance. And the speech therapist is off the hook for failing to made headway in communication with the non-speaking student since he’s written off as being low functioning, lazy, or dumb.”

“I would welcome any of these committee members into my home to see my daughter communicating. I cannot imagine anyone interacting with my daughter in person would want to then deny her the ability to spell her thoughts.  I cannot imagine anyone wanting to sentence her to a life of touching teacher-chosen buttons on an app that only addresses her basic needs after they witnessed her describing her thoughts, desires, fears, and poetic voice.  Please – anyone from ASHA – come meet her.”

“It is beyond my comprehension that a body that is supposed to represent speech language pathologists would attempt to silence the voices of people who have fought so hard to find them.”

“The civil rights of individuals with disabilities need to be upheld and they should have a choice of and access to their desired communication method.”

“Too often, the failed autistic speaker is blamed for the failure to speak because he is labeled as being too low functioning, too lazy, or too dumb to advance. And the speech therapist is off the hook for failing to made headway in communication with the non-speaking student since he’s written off as being low functioning, lazy, or dumb.”

“It is a true Copernican revolution, a radical change of point of view: to try to realize that what appears to be of a behavioral nature (gestures, attitudes, etc.) returns to motor and sensory disorders. And so change your attitude towards these silent fighters.”

“I cannot understand taking away human rights for individuals that have had a lifetime of pain already.”

“We’ll never learn if we are afraid of scrutiny and progress. Your position statement will prevent the freedom and flow of research needed to learn more about why and when it works and why it sometimes cannot be easily demonstrated. Your former policy statement did include precautions. But this new one is nothing short of a violation of civil rights.”

“Keep ASHA on the right side of history. Non-speaking does not equal non-thinking.”

“We beseech the higher aspirations of the thousands of kind speech therapists to rise up and speak up and reject this abhorrent, humanity-depriving point of view.”  

“Three individuals from the school district have also come to observe his sessions and have agreed that he can communicate to a far greater extent using this method than any of the many tried previously (PECS, ProLoQuo2Go, and many years of both standard speech therapy and Verbal Behavior/ABA).”

“I am a Speech Language Pathologist working in South Africa. My clientele consists primarily of non-speaking and minimally speaking autistic children. I felt compelled to respond to your review proposal as decisions reached in the USA usually have ripple effects around the world, and I am horrified by the thought of the type of thinking reflected in this peer review proposal coming to my country.”

“We tried every known means of communication, with little to no success before using Facilitated Communication. And we are still open to the use of every means. Granted, it is not a perfect method, but neither is speech, writing, signing, etc., nor is influence absent from any.”

“You review the existing research and find it not well-designed enough to support the conclusion that the individuals with disabilities are communicating their own thoughts. However, by definition, if the research is not well-designed, you cannot draw ANY conclusion from the findings, including that the thoughts are NOT those of the individuals with disabilities. Your assertions that the communication is not authentic is unsupported by evidence.”

“When I was growing up, speaking was so frustrating. I could see the words in my brain, but then I realized that making my mouth move [was needed to] get those letters to come alive, they died as soon as they were born. What made me feel angry was to know that I knew exactly what I was to say and my brain was retreating in defeat.”

“It is the position of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) that communication is the essence of human life and that all people have the right to communicate to the fullest extent possible. No individuals should be denied this right, irrespective of the type and/or severity of communication, linguistic, social, cognitive, motor, sensory, perceptual, and/or other disability(ies) they may present.”

“The sad reality is that many have given up on adults. Our lives matter. This is my mission now. The adults have gone silent too long. My quality of life has changed dramatically since I started spelling.”

“My life as an AAC user is at stake here.  More importantly others who are still in the silent abyss will never make it out.”

“Thinking of all those individuals condemned to silence by this move makes me spitting mad and beyond sorrowful.”

“When Anne Sullivan started teaching Helen Keller by spelling on her hand, there was no scientific proof of this method. If she was teaching today she would be shunned via positions such as this and prevented from teaching.”