Using the INSTRUCT App to Teach Communication Partners to Interact Effectively with Individuals Who Use AAC

Abstract

People who need or use AAC interact with many different communication partners, most of whom have limited, if any, prior training and experience in AAC. As a result, these partners frequently limit the communication and participation of individuals who need AAC. Research shows that communication partners can be taught strategies to support communication (Kent-Walsh et al., 2015). Unfortunately, current approaches to partner training are not as effective or efficient as they could be. The goals of this presentation are: (1) to share a new web-based app, INSTRUCT, that is designed to support individuals who use AAC, their families, and service providers in developing short, focused trainings to teach communication partners how to interact effectively; and (2) to discuss a series of research studies that have evaluated the effects of INSTRUCT trainings to teach a wide range of communication partners various strategies or procedures to support the communication of individuals who need or use AAC.

The web-based INSTRUCT app is freely available through the AAC Learning Center. It is specifically designed to allow individuals who use AAC, their families, and service providers to quickly and easily develop short, focused trainings that can be delivered to any communication partner “just in time” as needed. INSTRUCT trainings teach partners what to do and how to do it; they are highly practical and can be easily personalized. The INSTRUCT app incorporates evidence-based instructional techniques including checklists of the steps of the targeted strategy and video models to demonstrate each step. The trainings are easily accessible on everyday technology and can be quickly shared.

We plan to demonstrate the app and also share a series of research studies that developed and evaluated INSTRUCT trainings to teach various strategies or procedures to a wide range of communication partners, including INSTRUCT training to teach: (a) school-aged peers to provide choices to children with multiple disabilities during play activities (McCarty & Light, 2025), (b) educational staff to support communication of students who use eye gaze AAC (Sowers et al., 2026), and (c) peers to interact with an autistic college student (Steffen & Light, 2026). All studies utilized randomized pretest posttest control group designs; results showed that the communication partners who completed the INSTRUCT trainings demonstrated significant increases in their use of the target strategies and were therefore more successful in their interactions with children and adults who needed or used AAC. We will also discuss successful use of INSTRUCT trainings in preservice preparation to bridge the gap between classroom instruction and clinical practice in AAC: (a) to prepare preservice speech language pathologists (SLPs) to teach decoding skills to children who need AAC (Brittlebank et al., 2026); and (b) to prepare undergraduate students to implement visual scene display (VSD) intervention with beginning communicators who need AAC. Participants will have the opportunity to access a library of INSTRUCT trainings and to consider how they might develop and use INSTRUCT trainings themselves to reduce societal barriers and enhance the communication of people who use AAC.