There is more to speaking than Vocal Oral speech

there is so much value put on oral vocal speech, (mouth words) that people not only overlook but also devalue any other method of communication,  This has lead to hundreds of thousands of people being denied communication access, or forced to wait years before anyone tried to start to find a method of communication that worked for them, spending years fighting to have their voice heard, and having their other forms of communication often looked at as problematic behaviors, or over reactions.  it has also lead to people who could benefit from AAC but have any speech at all denied access because well they have speech so they  "shouldn't use AAC because they "dont need it,""  which of coarse is both wrong and often comes both from people around them but is often instilled as an internal message. yet when they do use AAC they find they communicate better, areas they struggle to communicate they can and an over all improvement in things

we act like vocal oral speech is the most important thing  you always hear about first mouth words, parents crying because they got called mommy or heard i love you for the first time, but i basically never see other forms of communication treated the same way ever!  you dont hear parents jumping for joy over first picture card, or first words on high tech apps, or first spelled words or sentence,  you rarely see the same admiration for this form of communication because people dont count AAC and non vocal speech as having the same importance or value and this needs to change!! all to often people hold off aac they deny it because to them vocal speech matters more, they cant see it as equal to other forms of communication, we need to change this! we need to make it clear all the other methods of communication have so so so much value and they are just as real and rich and beautiful and important as vocal oral speech,  We show that communication and communication access matters so much more than weather or not it comes from oral speech! We need the world to value all forms of communication equally and we cant do that until we start treating them equally. we need to push for building a communication accessible word with diffrent communication method options everywhere, we need to push for our tech to also be made accessible for all communication styles not just built around those who use mouth words!

 and there are so so so many different ways other than oral vocal speech to communicate many are even normalized, (like this blog your reading now this is normalized aac)  but there are so many more  just to name a few 

• body language and "behavior" ie what people generally call expressing emotions
• sign language
• letter board
• PECS (picture exchange communication) 
• PODD book
• Paper and pencil 
• Symbol boards 
• Objects used for communication 
• Pictures 

• Dedicated devices like a Dynavox  
• Eye Gaze based AAC devices 
• iPads, tablets and phones with full comprehensive AAC apps 

some of the normalized forms of speaking are,

• letters
• passing notes
• texting
• email
• chatrooms
• blog
• IRC
• twitter
• instagram
• snapchat
• vine
• tik tok
• and other social media and online forms of communication

with all these different forms of communications we need to stop acting like vocal speech is the most important thing ever!we need to fight for and build a communication accessible world! we need to normalize switching between various forms of communication we need to stop fearing a life with out mouth words!