How do I hold the school accountable for providing AAC services for my child?

If your child uses AAC and you want to hold the school accountable for providing AAC services, there are several ways to include AAC in the IEP. For one, AAC minutes should be a service in your child's IEP. You can also request parent training and try to combine it with the staff training so that all members of your child's care team are on the same page. You can include training for staff on AAC

in the IEP at the beginning of the school year and any time there’s a staff change. You may want to add to the IEP that wherever your child goes, their AAC device goes with them. AAC should not be used for testing alone; it should be embedded in all IEP goals. However, teachers should accept any and all communication. You don’t want your child to be in a situation where they point to what they want, but then the staff makes them do it on AAC, which makes your child not want to use it.

For more tips about AAC in the IEP, check out this article.