Defining commonly used terms in the Autistic and AAC community

There are some commonly used terms in both the Autistic and AAC community. These terms tend to identify either the individuals amount or type of AAC use, such as part or full time AAC user, or their speech capabilities and support need, for example, non speaking, semi verbal, intermingantly non speaking etc...Though these are commonly used terms, they don’t tend to be really well defined anywhere and many of them are often misused. So I wanted to create a list of terms and definitions that are important that are often used, to help people know them better 

Intermittent AAC user: someone who tends to use AAC in short bursts and whose primary form of communication is vocal speech, often because AAC use is for specific situations .

Part time AAC user: individuals who rely on AAC At least some of the time. Many part time AAC users rely on AAC for 25 to 70 percent of communication needs but this is not all part time AAC users.

Full time AAC user: people who use AAC (including sounds screeches and behaviors and gestures ) for all their communication needs 

AAC as primary form of communication: people who primarily rely on AAC over vocal speech weather they are part time or full time AAC users.

AAC as secondary form of communication: someone who plan on using AAC in general even though they aren’t constantly using it and plan to use it in a variety of situations.

AAC as back up form of communication: AAC users  who use AAC as needed either in emergencies or when speech goes out or when in overload or other situations in which AAC is necessary for them to get their message across 

Multimodal Communicator: using more than one form  of AAC of method of communication, basically someone who has a range of AAC tools, and can also be someone who uses a range of AAC tools and changes between communication styles regularly or semi regularly, his can be switching between high tech to low tech then to asl then to high tech and even some times to speech for some individuals. This can include full Time AAC user, part time, intermittent ect.

Nonspeaking: not i didn't use the term non verbal because they aitistic community is purposely trying to move away from this, someone who is unable to speak, or who is minimal verbal or who's speech is unreliable 

Verbal/ speaking: anyone  whose primary (but not always only) form of communication is through vocal speech, while they are often referred to as verbal, there is some movement to change the term to speaking autistics. Verbal/Speaking autistics often rely on more than one mode of communication including intermittent, part time AAC use 

Semi-verbal: Individuals who have speech that may be unclear to others or have a limited speaking abilities that come with extreme difficulty,

Intermittently non speaking: anyone who primarily rely on vocal speech but whose speech is unreliable, and can often stop working partially or entirely for short to long periods of time unpredictably. Though some individuals can predict sometimes when this will happen, but it is not consistently predictable. 

Intermittently speaking:  anyone who is primarily non speaking but can have some use of speech from time to time. This is often with great effort and vastly unreliable and unpredictable. 

*Note* the last two terms may appear very similar at first glance but the order is really important and 

These term can be used in many combinations but but can also stand alone and it alll depends on individual preferences . For example someone might say they are an intermittently nonspeaking, part time AAC user, or they might just say they are a part time AAC use,. At the same some will only idefy with how much they use AAC, while others with how much they use speech. And as said above many will mix and match as fits both them and context of the situation. At the end it’s up to the individual to decide which term they use for themselves and which they identify with, and I hope this gives at least a bit of a baseline for knowing and understanding these commonly used term.