Hey I’m not a speech therapist but I am a verbal autistic. I use an aac even though I can speak usually. There are times however when I become non verbal like in a shutdown or meltdown or when I’m very anxious. I also faint and become non verbal before and after fainting for a bit. I have the same thoughts as you but aac is available for anyone and everyone who has any issue with communicating. Wether it’s limited ability to access words in your vocabulary quickly like autism social anxiety or wether someone has a trach or paralysed vocal cords and physically cannot produce sounds etc it is a tool to help people access the world. So yes you are of course valid to use an aac it can always just be a stop gap until you have a better script to deal with speaking if you feel guilty to use it but you have the right to access anything which helps you interact and engage with the world around you more easily.

Yes it’s absolutely fine.we use AAC part time and we are verbal but sometimes we find it hard to communicate in general or during meltdowns so AAC has really helped us.

Yes!! AAC is a tool used by so many people for so many different reasons

Touch chat by Saltillo

From what I’ve read, most speech therapists disagree

Think of a toddler learning to speak, they comment first and are constantly being modelled with mouth words by others talking around them without having to speak themselves at all.

@@peterbridan3485 yes for a neurotypically developing child. What about people who don’t attend to the modeling? How is that beneficial if they aren’t even seeing it?

@@brittneyurban7136 they need constant modelling of both requests and comments as far as I am aware.

Yeah, it's great, but students shouldn't be going into the profanity area.