What is meant by aided versus unaided forms of communication?
Typically, forms of AAC are divided into two broad groups, known as unaided and aided forms of communication. Unaided forms of communication consist of nonverbal means of natural communication (including gestures and facial expressions) as well as manual signs and American Sign Language (ASL). These forms of communication can be employed by children and adults who are able to use their hands and have adequate fine-motor coordination skills to make fine-grained production distinctions between handshapes. Of course, communication partners must be able to understand the signs for communication to be functional.Aided forms of communication consist of those approaches that require some additional external support, such as a communication board with visual-graphic symbols (i.e., pictures, photographs, line drawings, Blissymbols, printed words, traditional orthography) that stand for or represent what an individual wants to express or a sophisticated computer with symbols, words, letters, or
