About this episode

Anna Lechleiter discusses how non-speakers can communicate through Spelling to Communicate, highlighting the distinction between motor problems and cognitive understanding.

Anna Lechleiter works with people who have never been able to speak, and who have spent their lives being treated as though they had nothing to say. She is a Spelling to Communicate practitioner, and her job is to give non-speakers a way to tell the world what has been going on in their heads all along. She explains why speech is a motor problem rather than a thinking one: the words are there, but the brain cannot reliably drive the body that produces them. That distinction changes how non-speaking people are assessed, educated and spoken to, because almost every standard autism assessment measures motor control and reports the result as intelligence. Anna talks Laura through what happens in a session, from stencil boards to a keyboard, and tells the story that changed her mind completely: a young man called Caoimh, a letter board, and a freezing afternoon when he spelled out that he hoped it would snow. The last stretch belongs to the spellers themselves, as Anna reads the words of Max, Caoimh and Megha in their own language. 🔑 Key Points Non-speaking is a motor problem, not a thinking one The words are there. The difficulty is the brain reliably getting the body to produce…

People in this episode

Host: Laura Dowling

Guest: Anna Lechleiter

Topics covered

• non-speaking communication
• Spelling to Communicate
• motor control
• autism assessment
• brain-body disconnect

Keywords

• non-speakers
• communication
• autism
• Spelling to Communicate
• motor problems
• brain-body disconnect
• fine motor control

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