ABSTRACT
Today, through multidisciplinary contributions, individuals who cannot speak or write have access to a wide variety of therapies, techniques, and systems designed to ameliorate challenges to eective communication. e eld of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) has the goal to optimize the communication of individuals with signicant communication disorders (ASHA, 2004). Biomedical and rehabilitation engineering play a signicant role in the research and development of AAC and related assistive technology. Engineering contributions range from relatively independent work on product denition and design to the collaborative development and evaluation of tools to support the contributions of other professions, such as linguistics, speech-language pathology, special education, and occupational therapy.
