Motivation, attitude, self-confidence and resilience matter when it comes to owning your communication as an AAC user. In my recent research (Moulam, 2026), the top three things professionals said created successful AAC users were:

1. An AAC advocate at home, school or preferably both.
2. Motivated to use their device.
3. Bespoke equipment with an individualised set-up.

It all sounds simple, but the hardest to achieve, from my personal perspective, is the AAC user being motivated:

• Wanting to communicate.
• Identifying with the reason to use their own resources.
• Becoming self-confident by trusting their own abilities.
• Learning to cope with pressure and come back stronger.

Wanting to communicate

For as long as I can remember, my head has always been bursting with ideas, thoughts, opinions and more. My Mum always says I can talk for England, just that most people can’t understand me easily. But I know my experience is not necessarily the same as other AAC users.

My speech is dysarthric. If you know me well, you might understand me, but you will have to focus carefully on what I am saying. My mum would often ask me to repeat things. As a result, I got quite adept at using props, body language, air spelling and my own signs to make sure I was understood. Growing up, I sometimes got frustrated and would say things didn’t matter.  At that point, my Mum always sat down with me. She told me if I wanted to say something, it was always important, and I must try again. On one occasion I even remember her stopping the car on grass at the edge of the road so she could turn around and listen properly.

Early success with AAC

I’ve written a lot about the importance of identifying the need for AAC early. Looking back, I was lucky. I was 3, nearly 4, when I had my first assessment, almost 30 years ago. It was a long and tiring morning, but we left when I told everyone I was hungry and ready to go. The assessment team were very clever to show me where the symbols for home and McDonald’s were and make them easy to find. On the way back we stopped at a McDonald’s Drive-thru. Early success matters.

A few weeks later, the local authority AAC person visited me at home. This time, with a Dynavox 3000, I played with it for a couple of hours while they talked to my Mum. I was also answering questions; clearly, I was being assessed. Looking back, it was a profound experience to find that someone other than my parents or childminder could understand what I wanted. In fact, I wasn’t too pleased when the device disappeared at the end of the session, although I was promised I would be getting my own ‘soon’.

Sadly, today getting an AAC assessment isn’t always easy for many children. There are many diverse reasons, but not having AAC is not a reason to assume children don’t understand. It is important to always presume competence and to remember that, without AAC, children just don’t ‘yet’ have a way to share what they are thinking and demonstrate their learning.

Abandonment

Not using a device, especially for a child like me with natural speech, however hard to comprehend, might be understandable.

• The teaching assistant in class got used to my voice.
• The teacher had a fear of computers; the only other one in the school was on the secretary’s desk.
• At home I was understood in context; I was shattered at the end of each day and only wanted to sleep.

As a result, my device only came home each weekend for Mum to programme something for circle time. Looking back, I realise you don’t miss what you never had. We were all managing, especially as much of the early communication in school is structured and adult-led.

Identifying with the reason to use AAC

Active engagement

A year after starting school, I came home and was trying to tell Mum about my day. We had a new boy in class. I could spell his first name, but to get Mum to understand his surname, I took her to my bookcase. There I pointed to the Beatrix Potter book, The Tale of Jeremy Fisher. Yes, his name was Fisher. Then, that same week, I tried to tell Mum that Queen Elizabeth had beheaded Mary, Queen of Scots. It was like a weird game of charades. It left me frustrated and led Mum to see the class teacher the next day. The result was that my device came home daily from then on. Up until then, my Mum had usually understood me, but it was clear that without context, she was beginning to struggle.

Soon after, I started having a teenager come to ‘play’ every day in school holidays so I could practice using my AAC device. We did lots of role-play activities that mirrored everyday life. This included everything from playing teacher, doing the class register, doctor’s appointments, writing shopping lists, ordering drinks and food in cafes, buying cinema tickets, and more.  From there, we moved on to doing most of these same activities in real life. With AAC, we had the means, we rehearsed the method and then had the opportunity to put it into practice.

Becoming self-confident

Successful interactions came through the high expectations of those around me at home, who valued every communication attempt I made. When I was out and about, I got to try out in real-life situations what I practised at home. In school, the emphasis was more on me using a word prediction package for written work than using AAC for speech.

Doing my first conference presentation to strangers gave me untold confidence. By then I was 12. I’d been encouraged to speak at the conference after I’d written about how it felt to be disabled and use AAC. It took me weeks to prepare, and 84 people came to listen to my session. During the rest of the conference, people sought me out to ask me questions about what I thought on a wide variety of topics. Suddenly, I belonged in this wonderful AAC community. As I made connections with other AAC users, families, and professionals who understood AAC, I began to feel accepted for who I am. For the first time, I felt safe in an environment where people were patient and kind.  Within the AAC world, I finally found I could be me.

It wasn’t easy to be myself at school or in the wider community, although things changed when I went to special school at age 13. Even there, I was still quiet and often spoken over by my speaking peers in class. Over time, I became a role model for other AAC users in school from age 4 upwards, encouraging them to use their devices. For those who didn’t know me well, I was still a quiet introvert, yet in the AAC world I was known as confident and always willing to contribute.

Coping with pressure, becoming resilient

Outside of the AAC community, I always found using AAC daunting. Even in school, the conversation usually moved on before I could react and programme a response. Then, if a teacher asked me a question, I often froze. I needed time to process what I wanted to say before I could programme the response; this caused huge anxiety and stress, which in turn made it harder to even physically programme my device. I later understood why; see my page about synaesthesia and blog about thinking time or a mind blank.

Over time, I learned from successful interactions in the AAC world to breathe deep, take my time, and stay determined to keep trying again and again until I got my message across.

Having the right equipment, set up in the right way, is important.  Using AAC is hard enough without physical challenges if resources are at the wrong angle or in the wrong place. Then having an AAC advocate matters too!  The advocate provides the means, method, and opportunity for communication, but the AAC user must also be motivated.

You can read more about owning your communication as an AAC user in my book: ‘How to live audAACiously: The ultimate lived experience guide to AAC’. It is available to order through many different booksellers, my Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers and Amazon.  You could also ask your library to get it in for you!

Reference: Moulam. Beth. (2026). What factors make AAC users limitless: Results from qualitative study with professionals. Presentation. Communication Matters International Conference. Leeds UK.