Glossary

A working vocabulary.

The conversation about supported communication uses a lot of terms inconsistently. Here are the ones we use — defined the way we mean them.

Methods

Assisted Communication (AC): The umbrella term used on this site (and in the contemporary peer-reviewed literature, including the January 2026 Autism Research paper on the path to independent typing) for the family of supported, neuromotor-informed communication practices. AC falls under the broader category of Assistive Technology, Augmentative and Alternative Communication. S2C, RPM, the Spellers Method, supported typing, and FC are distinct approaches under the AC umbrella — not synonyms.
Facilitated communication (FC): An AC method that involves providing a backward, resistive pull (away from the keys) on the communicator's arm — fading back over time to develop independence. The resistance gives proprioceptive feedback that helps the typer stabilize, motor-plan, regulate, and feel their body in space, so they can push forward with intentionality to choose their target on a letterboard, keyboard, or (most commonly) an iPad with a text-to-speech app.
Supported typing: A term often used interchangeably with FC. The backward resistive pull usually starts at the wrist and fades back to forearm, elbow, and shoulder as the typer works toward independence. The proprioceptive feedback helps the typer stabilize, regulate, and feel their body in space so they can push forward with intentionality on a letterboard, keyboard, or iPad with a text-to-speech app.
S2C (Spelling to Communicate): A distinct AC approach: letterboard-based instruction developed by Elizabeth Vosseller and taught through the International Association for Spelling as Communication (I-ASC).
Rapid Prompting Method (RPM): A distinct AC approach, developed by Soma Mukhopadhyay, using fast-paced verbal, auditory, visual, and tactile prompts to elicit responses from nonspeaking learners.
Spellers Method: A distinct AC approach: an integrative, motor-based practice featured in the documentary Spellers (2023).
Independent typing: Typing without physical contact, often the long-term goal of AC practice. Independence is typically partial and context-dependent rather than absolute.

Coaching supports

Auditory cues: Spoken prompts that help a learner orient, initiate, or sustain attention — naming a target letter, counting in, or giving a verbal 'go.' A coaching support, not a method.
Gestural prompts: Non-contact cues — a point, a tap, a head nod — that direct attention or signal a next step. A coaching support, not a method.
Directional prompts: Indicating a quadrant of the board, gesturing toward the next row, or angling the letterboard so the learner's gaze finds the target. A coaching support, not a method.
Motor coaching: Postural cues, positioning of the arm or shoulder, modeled movement, or gradually shaped reach across a session. A coaching support, not a method.
Regulation support: Co-regulation between partner and learner — pacing, breath cues, breaks, sensory adjustments — that keeps the learner inside the window where purposeful motor planning is possible. A coaching support, not a method.
Hand-over-hand support: A teaching practice in which a partner physically guides the learner's hand through a movement. Widely used in education and therapy (e.g., toothbrushing) and common in ABA. In AC, it is the most rarely and briefly used coaching method, appearing only in the earliest stages of letterboard-based methods as a brief demonstration. It is never used in FC, where the touch is always resistance in the opposite direction (see Resistance) and the typer always initiates movement toward the keys.
Resistance: In FC, the physical touch is always resistance in the direction opposite of the keyboard, giving body awareness. The individual always initiates movement toward the keyboard and chooses the letter. There is a 'reset' between each letter — the typer pulls their hand back and relaxes their shoulder into a neutral position briefly — creating a rhythmic back-and-forth motion. Resistance begins at the wrist or forearm and is gradually faded backward (forearm → elbow → shoulder → no contact) as motor skill becomes more proficient. The resistance is dynamic: more or less may be needed depending on the typer's motor fluency or level of body tension on a given day.

Tools

Letterboard: A printed alphabet board used as the response medium in many supported communication methods. Letterboards may be hand-held by a partner, table-mounted, or replaced over time with stencils or keyboards.
Stencil board: A rigid letterboard with cut-out letter holes, used as a transitional tool that provides tactile feedback while reducing the partner's role.
Speech-generating device (SGD): A high-tech AAC device that produces synthesized speech from text or symbols selected by the user.
AAC: Augmentative and alternative communication — any tool, system, or strategy used to supplement or replace spoken language. Includes low-tech (letterboards, picture boards) and high-tech (speech-generating devices, communication apps) systems.

Neuromotor

Apraxia: A motor planning disorder in which a person cannot reliably perform purposeful, learned movements on demand despite having the intent and the physical capacity to do them.
Global apraxia: Apraxia that affects motor planning across the whole body rather than only one domain. Sometimes called whole-body apraxia.
Dyspraxia: A milder or developmental form of apraxia, often used interchangeably with apraxia in pediatric contexts.
Childhood apraxia of speech (CAS): A specific motor speech disorder of childhood, distinct from but often co-occurring with broader motor planning differences.
Motor planning: The cognitive and neural process of selecting, sequencing, and initiating movement. Distinct from comprehension or intent; impaired in apraxia.
Motor learning: The process by which the nervous system acquires and consolidates patterns of movement through practice. The frame within which supported communication is most coherently understood.
Fading: The gradual reduction of physical, sensory, or verbal support as a learner's motor skill consolidates. A core goal of any responsible supported communication practice.
Proprioception: The sense of where one's body parts are in space. Often atypical in autistic and apraxic learners, and a frequent target of supported practice.
Interoception: The sense of internal body states (hunger, heart rate, need to urinate, emotional arousal). Atypical interoception affects regulation and, downstream, motor availability.
Sensory regulation: The process by which a person manages incoming sensory input to maintain a state in which purposeful action is possible. A precondition for motor learning.
Coregulation: Regulation achieved with the help of another nervous system — a partner's calm, breath, rhythm, or presence. A normal feature of human development; especially important in supported communication.
Initiation: The act of starting a movement. A specific bottleneck in many forms of apraxia; people may know what to do and be unable to begin it.
Stim / stimming: Self-regulating, repetitive movement. Often serves a regulatory function and is not, in itself, evidence of distress or incapacity.

Concepts

Authorship: The question of who is producing a given communicated message — the typist, the partner, or some combination. The central empirical question in critiques of facilitated communication.
Message-passing study: A research design in which a facilitator and communicator are shown different stimuli to test whether the typed output reflects the communicator's information or the facilitator's. Informative under its specific conditions; often over-extended in interpretation.
Ideomotor effect: Unconscious motor behavior produced in response to expectation, classically invoked to explain facilitator influence. Real, well-documented in some contexts, and frequently assumed to explain more than it has actually been shown to explain.
Presuming competence: The clinical and ethical stance that a person's intelligence and personhood are intact until reliably demonstrated otherwise — a higher evidentiary bar than the default 'absent until proven present' stance.
Least dangerous assumption: Anne Donnellan's principle that, under uncertainty, clinicians should adopt the assumption whose consequences would be least harmful if it turns out to be wrong. Almost always favors presuming competence.
Eye-tracking evidence: Studies that record where a typist's eyes are looking before they reach for a letter. Findings of target-anticipatory gaze are difficult to reconcile with strong-form facilitator-authorship accounts.

Identity

Nonspeaking: A descriptor preferred by many autistic communicators who do not reliably speak. Often preferred to 'nonverbal,' which inaccurately implies absence of language.
Unreliable speaker: A person who has some speech but cannot count on it to convey what they mean — for example, scripts that don't match intent, or speech that drops out under stress.
Profound autism: A proposed clinical category for autistic people who are minimally or nonspeaking and require 24/7 support. The label is contested by many nonspeaking advocates, who argue it is used to justify lower expectations.
Communication partner: A trained, trusted person who provides the physical, sensory, verbal, or emotional support a typist needs to produce text. Sometimes called a facilitator.
Self-advocate: A disabled person who speaks (or types) for themselves about their own life and the systems that affect it.

Organizations

I-ASC: The International Association for Spelling as Communication — the organization that trains and credentials Spelling to Communicate (S2C) practitioners.
C4A Academy: A free, multi-lesson video and resource library from Communication4All.org that teaches families and schools how to support nonspeakers learning text-based communication.
Spellers Freedom Foundation: A nonprofit advancing the rights and access of nonspeaking communicators, growing out of the Spellers documentary community.
ASHA: The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Its position statements have historically opposed FC; the position statements are not the same as the underlying evidence.

Legal

Effective communication: Under the ADA, the obligation of public entities to ensure that people with disabilities can communicate as effectively as people without disabilities — including by providing accommodations and auxiliary aids.
ADA Title II: The section of the Americans with Disabilities Act covering state and local government services, including public schools, which carries the effective-communication obligation.
Auxiliary aids and services: Tools and services a public entity may need to provide so that a disabled person can participate. Letterboards, communication partners, and AAC devices may all qualify.
Reasonable accommodation: An adjustment to a service, environment, or process that lets a disabled person participate on equal terms, unless doing so imposes undue hardship.
IEP: Individualized Education Program — the legal document outlining a U.S. public-school student's special education services and supports.

Clinical

Evidence-based practice (EBP): In ASHA's framing, the integration of best available external evidence, internal clinical expertise, and the values and preferences of the individual and family. All three pillars are required, not optional.
Outcome measure: A way of quantifying change as a result of intervention — for example, words per minute, independence level, message length, novel utterances, or quality-of-life indicators.
Locked-in syndrome: A neurological condition in which a person is conscious and cognitively intact but cannot move or speak. A historically useful analogy for the experience many nonspeaking communicators describe.