Internal — Working Document

Why we use Assisted Communication (AC) as the umbrella term.

A five-point case from a colleague who has been in the trenches on these issues since the late 1970s — including a chapter in Howard Shane's 1994 anti-FC volume that was the only one urging readers to keep an open mind. We adopt his framing and explain why.

This page is intentionally unlinked from the main navigation and marked noindex. It is a shared reference for the team and collaborators, not a public-facing article.

The proposal

Use Assisted Communication (AC) as the umbrella term for the family of supported, neuromotor-informed practices. Treat FC, RPM, S2C, the Spellers Method, and supported typing as distinct approaches under that umbrella — not as synonyms, and not as repackagings of one another.

The five points

  1. FC is a deeply embedded, toxic term in the speech-language community and beyond. Attempting a 180° rebrand of "facilitated communication" itself is a steeper climb than using a more generic alternative — Assisted Communication — under which FC continues to exist as one approach. The rehabilitation work still happens; it just doesn't have to carry the entire site.
  2. Other practitioners have not signed up to be branded as FC. Dawnmarie, Elizabeth Vosseller (S2C), Elizabeth Bonker, and others should speak for themselves about whether they consider their work to be FC. Using AC as the umbrella respects that they may not.
  3. It avoids feeding the ASHA conflation. One of the weakest moves in the ASHA position statement is treating all AC approaches as virtually the same. Retreating to "FC" as the umbrella replicates that error and hands critics their favorite move — e.g., Beals attacking colleagues as "FC converts" even when their writing has been about AC generically.
  4. AC is already the live term in the literature and in court. The January 2026 Autism Research paper on the path to independent typing uses assisted communication (AC). Expert-witness testimony has used it to successfully distinguish S2C from older Biklen-era FC in school district disputes — most recently in a case that the defense settled favorably for the family.
  5. It gives us a bigger lever for less work. Focusing the brand on FC means climbing a much bigger hill than using our own language while not dismissing contemporary FC. Recent attempts by critics to claim "all approaches are the same as FC" have not been landing. Don't help them.

How this shows up on the site

  • /assisted-communication is the canonical umbrella page. The "Framework" nav tab points there.
  • /what-is-fc is preserved as a historical and reclamation page about FC specifically — one approach under AC, with its own contested history. The SEO landing pages (/is-facilitated-communication-real, /facilitated-communication-debunked, and the Ouija-board response) stay live to meet people where they are searching, and route them into the AC framing.
  • The glossary leads with Assisted Communication (AC); FC remains an entry, described as one historical approach under AC.
  • The Methods hub is framed as "approaches to Assisted Communication," with coaching supports kept clearly separate from teaching methods.

What we are not doing

We are not abandoning FC, attacking its practitioners, or pretending the term doesn't exist. FC remains one approach under AC, with its own page, its own history, and its own SEO surface. What changes is that the site no longer asks every reader to accept "FC" as the generic label for the whole field before they can engage with the work.