Christina Schmidt: Empowering Families Through Culturally Competent AAC

About this episode

Christina Schmidt discusses the importance of cultural competency in AAC and the need for clinicians to address their biases while building trust with families.

In this episode, Christina Schmidt discusses the critical role of cultural competency in AAC, emphasizing the need to honor linguistic and cultural diversity, such as African American English, within communication systems. She highlights the importance of clinicians addressing their own implicit biases and taking a thoughtful, reflective approach when working with families. Christina encourages professionals to build trust gradually, prioritize collaboration, and empower both caregivers and clients to ensure AAC systems truly reflect the user's identity and culture! 🔑Cultural Competency and AAC Must Go Hand-in-Hand: Christina emphasizes the importance of recognizing and respecting cultural and dialectal diversity—especially African American English (AAE)—when programming and implementing AAC systems. Ignoring these cultural elements can undermine identity, communication authenticity, and trust between professionals and families. 🔑 Clinicians Must Address Their Own Implicit Biases: A foundational step in becoming culturally competent is self-reflection. Christina encourages professionals to examine and challenge their own internalized biases before engaging with families. This…

People in this episode

Hosts: Rachel Madel, Chris Bugaj

Guest: Christina Schmidt

Topics covered

• cultural competency
• AAC
• linguistic diversity
• implicit biases
• trust building
• collaboration
• identity

Keywords

• AAC
• cultural competency
• implicit biases
• African American English
• trust
• collaboration
• communication systems

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: African American English

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