Reflective Analysis Of An Appropriate Communication Board

My wife and I participated in communicating with an alphabet communication board. We attempted to discuss the evening plans including what we were eating for dinner and what we needed from the grocery store. As I started with the alphabet communication board, both her and I immediately discovered how difficult and time consuming communication would be. During my attempts to spell each word in a sentence, I found it difficult to indicate when the spelling of a word stopped and the next word began. This caused confusion with my communication partner as she continued to attempt to figure out the words within my sentence. Several times, I had to use a combination of head nods, eye contact and the yes/no portion of the communication board to indicate

This, coupled with the fact that conversations took considerably longer exacerbated my frustration. When I was able to communicate effectively and my partner correctly identified my statements, there was a sense of accomplishment. However, my communication partner would quickly respond using her speech, which left me with an uneasy feeling. In a conversation with two participants who speak, there is a familiar rhythm within a conversation. During this communication experience, I found that, due to my delayed ability to convey my message, I felt I was significantly holding back my partner, thereby, throwing off the familiar rhythm of a speech conversation which added to my frustration. Also, control of the conversation seemed to heavily favor my communication partner, leaving me to respond to her statements far more than initiating my own. This added to my frustration and left me feeling like more of a passenger in the conversation than an active

She also had to work hard in order to understand what I was attempting to say. Something I found interesting that I did not consider until this experience is the communicative partner who is not using an alphabet board or low tech AAC device cannot multitask. They must completely focus on the individual with the communication device in order to understand their message. To speed up the process, often, my communication partner would attempt to predict and finish my sentence. When she predicted incorrectly, this added to her frustration which, in turn, added more pressure on me to help her understand my