ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on cultural and technological convergences of disability and mobile media by examining a technology frequently used by individuals with significant speech impairments known as an augmentative and alternative communication system (AAC). Drawing on depictions of AAC in the Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything, I argue that AAC systems are mobile communications technologies and for a consideration of all mobile communication as existing along a spectrum between augmentations and alternatives to embodied oral speech. I conclude by outlining new research questions stemming from this theoretical reframing of mobile communication through the lens of disability studies.
