What is the Makaton Vocabulary?
Margaret Walker Research Speech Therapist, Psychiatry of Mental Handicap, London University, and Project Coordinator, Makaton Vocabulary Development Project Dr Aaron Armfield Professor of Special Education, University of Nebraska at Omaha First published 1981 in Special Education: Forward Trends, 8, 3, 19-20. Establishing communication with children and adults who have never gained or who have lost the capacity to speak can be a complicated challenge which may require choosing one of several approaches or a combined approach. In responding to this challenge teachers and therapists in more than 80 per cent of the ESN(S) schools in Great Britain are using signs from British Sign Language (Kiernan, 1979) and in the majority of instances, these signs are being used in conjunction with a language programme called ‘The Makaton Vocabulary’ as an aid to developing language in those with severe communication impairments. The use of alternative communication approaches with those who have severe
