ABSTRACT
Judith Felson Duchan attempts to locate the controversy between the two sides in the contradictory definitions of communication and autism. A group called the Inter-Disciplinary Working Party on Issues in Severe Communication Impairment was formed for primary purpose of closing down DEAL because the communication outcomes were "inconsistent with informed expectations in terms of established psychological, medical, or educational theory". The Government of Victoria enlisted the Intellectual Disability Review Panel (IDRP) to determine the validity of DEAL's methods. Facilitated communication (FC) was introduced in the United States during a time of intense debates about speech, agency, sexuality, and power sustained by the disability rights movement and its influence in the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The FC phenomenon, including other forms of augmentative and alternative communication, has spurred a literacy rights movement that insures all children the accessibility of resources, teachers, environment, and, the expectation that all individuals, no matter the severity of their disability, are literacy learners.
