Minspeak Moments

In this episode, we hear from my friend and colleague, Nigel Duckett, who is the Managing Director of PRC-Saltillo's Australian subsidiary, Liberator. Nigel began the company with three staff in 2007, and today as we head towards the close of 2022, it has 20 employee who have successfully established Unity & LAMP Words For Life as widely-used vocabulary options for people who use AAC. Over time, Nigel and his talented staff have de...

Beth Speaker-Christensen is an SLP near Chicago who has been working in the field for over 25 years. Beth started her career working for a contract agency in a variety of schools and nursing homes, and was excited to begin working at Shriners Children's Hospital in Chicago.  Whilst working there, she found many gadgets and gizmos used as assistive technology (all collecting dust) and realized quickly she would have to figure out fo...

Ainsley Vergara is a speech-language pathologist in Athens, Georgia. She was recently appointed Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Georgia where she provides clinical instruction and supervision for speech pathology students.

With regard to her clinical background, Ainsley has worked in a wide range of settings including schools, private practice, home health, and a nonprofit organization.

While working as an SLP in ...

Debbie Witkowski is a Speech-Language Pathologist from Semantic Compaction Systems (SCS) in Pittsburgh, PA. She is one of the coordinators and presenters of the "Successful Outcomes in AAC" seminar series, which was formally known as the "Pittsburgh AAC and Language Seminar Series" or PALSS for short.

She has worked with Semantic Compaction Systems since 2011 but her introduction to Minspeak came much earlier, back in 1986, when sh...

Paul Andres, an Occupational Therapist in Germany who worked at Prentke Romich Deutschland, first as a consultant then as a Minspeak Application Program developer, creating the popular Quasselkiste vocabulary. Later, he worked with Semantic Compaction Systems to take on a much broader role supporting the development and use of other non-english vocabulary sets. He was also instrumental in creating the Realize Language online AAC ...

Gail Van Tatenhove is known to many people  in the field of AAC for her work with Minspeak® and people who use Minspeak® systems. She is also an expert in  the practice of Descriptive Teaching and regularly presents webinars on this topic.  While Gail does a lot of different presentations in the field of AAC, she remains a working speech-language pathologist, still today providing direct AAC intervention. The majority of her pract...

Meher Banajee is Associate Professor and Program Director of Speech-language Pathology Program at LSUHSC Communication Disorders Department. Her areas of interest include AAC, autism spectrum disorders, early intervention and complex communication disorders as well as degenerative neurological disorders.  She has published articles on core vocabulary, AAC within the classroom, autism, and early intervention. She runs several social...

Tracy Kovach is one of the presenters and co-ordinators of the Pittsburgh AAC Language Seminar series and she’s been instrumental in keeping this event running for many years. She is the author of the popular evaluation tool, the AACP - Augmentative & Alternative Communication Profile: A Continuum of Learning, which is available online from the Pro-Ed website. In this episode, Tracy talks about her experiences as a clinician in Den...