Shirley McNaughton

Shirley McNaughton is an educator who, in 1971, led a pioneering, interdisciplinary team at the Ontario Crippled Children’s Centre in the first application of Blissymbolics as a substitute for speech with children with cerebral palsy. She led the program, spreading throughout the 70’s and 80’s to 17 countries, in 33 different languages. She served as founding president of ISAAC 1983-1986. She became the Program Director of Blissymbolics Communication International when it was established in 1975. She received her doctorate in 1998 at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto, examining the supportive role of Blissymbol communication prior to literacy acquisition. She has served as President of Blissymbolics Communication Institute – Canada since 2011 and completed the Blissymbolics archival collection in 2024 (https://archive.org/details/blissymbolics). She remains involved in projects developing Blissymbol vocabulary and in exploring the application of AI to support Blissymbol communication.

Disclosures:

Financial:

Shirley McNaughton has no financial disclosures to report.

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Shirley McNaughton has no nonfinancial disclosures to report.