Outline of what to write up for notes for an AAC evaluation

I've been recently asked for what I wrote up and shared for my AAC evaluation. The answer is a lot. I went through every last detail I thought possibly might be relevant and wrote it down ahead of time so that it was already available.

I find this both a really helpful method of preparing for an appointment in general because it makes me think about things ahead of time, and for more stressful appointments having things written out and printed out makes it a lot more accessible communication wise, because I can just pass over the documents and point out answers rather than need to remember in the moment things to say. I can spend days or weeks or months preparing what needed written up ahead of time. I can give myself all the preparation time I need. For an AAC evaluation I quite literally spent months preparing the relevant document. Giving myself that time let me put together what was best for me.

I've found as long as its well organized a lot of doctors appreciate this - but that the organization really matters, because they want to be able to skim, flip, and get an answer fast, not have to read all of 10 pages or whatever that was written. If they only end up reading less than a page of 25 pages that was written it might still be incredibly valuable, but it comes down to knowing the right page across those 25 pages.

That said I put together my outline for what to have for notes to prepare for an AAC evaluation to have available for an SLP. Each of these sections was well separated, with clear headers, even in subsections splitting things up smaller than these that are so specific to my situation that its not helpful to share. Lists are also frequently helpful.

My outline of what to write up for an AAC Evaluation

• Goals
• General communication Goals
• Priorities in an Evaluation
• Priorities in a Communication System
• What is not a goal for me
• About Me
• General about me, who am I, how do I spend my time, what do I like to do
• What is my experience with AAC
• What is my current set of disability supports
• About My Communication
• History by age
• Description of current communication
• Unreliable, Intermittent, Insufficient, Exhaustive Speech
• Definitions of Each of These
• Descriptions of how each of these describe me
• Example situations for each of these
• Overall summary of my current speech
• How do I communicate if I don't use speech
• Why do I use thing
• When do I use thing
• What works well
• What doesn't work well
• Relevant medical history
• Diagnoses that are directly associated with communication and how each are associated
• Diagnoses that are associated with what I can use for AAC and how each are associated
• Other medical associated traits that aren't Diagnosis that are relevant for them to take into account
• About my Current AAC System
• Overview of system
• What App(s) I use
• Preferred layouts, etc
• What access methods I use
• What do I like about my current system
• What doesn't work for me about my current system
• What issues am I having with my current system?
• What sorts of things are missing from my current system?
• How is this limiting my communication?
• Including specific examples
• What do I want in a system?
• Why is the above information leading me to think I need something different?
• What is the above information leading me to think I need?
• What do I need for alternative access and why?
• When do I need and/or otherwise use alternative access?
• How do I use alternative access? How does it fit into my life?
• Why do I use alternative access?
• What have I tried and why don't those work?
• What works and what doesn't about the best I have found so far?
• Features I need in a system
• Software
• Hardware
• Include details like why might these features be particularly important to me if not immediately apparent
• Summary of what I want to try

Specific notes I want to call out are:

• What things aren't priorities - while this can be short and it might not even be relevant - if there are things you know aren't things that matter to you, write it down. I've specifically had this be a particularly helpful section because of people being like oh, this thing I'd assume is a priority just isn't for you because you have different goals than I would.
• Defining intermittent/insufficient/unreliable/exhausive speech - even with giving examples, even with giving descriptions, giving definitions of the terms that are relevant to you is actually really helpful and makes a huge difference. It not only makes it easier to communicate with them, it helps with being taken more seriously when you're someone who as access to speech sometimes and not always.
• What have you tried and why doesn't it work - having this written out literally had my SLP already making suggestions about what I needed in the first skim through of this document. Being able to say this has already been tried is incredibly important when you're looking at insurance funding, but its also important for figuring out what to trial.
• Just plain, what do you want - so many people get tied up in needs, what do you want, what do you like do to, the fact that you're human and have preferences. You're allowed to prioritize a waterproof device because you like to spend time near the water. You're allowed to say you like high energy dogs and a device has gotta be able to sustain that. You're human. Be human.