A Word About the New Show ‘ Speechless ’

John Ross Bowie, Minnie Driver, Micah Fowler, Kyla Kenedy Last Wednesday night I settled in to watch “Speechless” on ABC—from the perspective of a speech-language pathologist. As is true for many of us, my job follows me wherever I go. It doesn’t really have an off switch. As SLPs, we witness the struggles of our clients and their families. When “Speechless” came along, I was curious, hopeful and somewhat wary of a show whose main focus is a family’s struggle with raising a child with special needs. Frankly, media hasn’t done a bang-up job of portraying people with disabilities—or those who support them—in a knowledgeable or positive light. But still, I sat on my neighbor’s couch, waiting for the premiere to air. The show centers on JJ (played by Micah Fowler), a teenage boy and oldest sibling of three. He’s equally adept at eye rolling to his mother’s comments as he is at using his headlight pointer to convey sarcastic messages on his low-tech communication board. His communication system is understated and effective, pointing to single words and presumably an alphabet board to communicate. One scene includes an awesomely huge alphabet board mounted in the kids’ shared bedroom via which JJ can spell things from his bed when talking to his siblings at night. The viewers never get a long look at JJ’s system, but the low-tech board serves as a nice segue to highlight how so many augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) users have no say ...
Source: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Press Releases - Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Tags: Speech-Language Pathology Augmentative Alternative Communication Source Type: blogs