Honoring Communicative Intent: What AAC Progress Actually Looks Like
(And a Framework for Helping Your Whole Team See It)
When Rachel Madel presented at the January ‘26 SLP Summit, she built her entire session around a single question: How do we honor intent for communication?
It sounds simple, but it’s not. Honoring communicative intent requires you to do something that goes against your clinical instinct. It requires that you stop measuring accuracy and start measuring initiation.
This post breaks down Rachel’s framework, translates it into the school-based reality your community lives in, and gives you a tool you can use with your team to start seeing and celebrating AAC progress as it happens.
The Problem With “Is It Working?”
When a student is introduced to AAC, the adults around them almost immediately start asking the wrong question.
Is it working?
And without anyone defining what “working” means, the answer almost always defaults to the most visible, measurable thing: accuracy. Is the student pressing the right symbol? Is the word they’re selecting connected to what’s happening in the room? Are they using it independently, without prompting?
If the answer is no, especially in the early stages, the team concludes that AAC isn’t working. The device goes back in the drawer.
Rachel named this pattern directly in our recent Bright Conversations conversation:
“If we assess success by how accurate they are with the device - especially after we haven’t done a really great job of modeling language, haven’t given lots of motivating situations with repetition - and we don’t see accuracy right off the bat, we just assume they’re not ready or this isn’t the right system.”
The problem isn’t the student. The problem is what we’re measuring.
The Baby Analogy That Reframes Everything
Here’s the framework shift Rachel uses, and once you hear it, you can’t unhear it.
When a baby says “da,” no one asks whether it was accurate. No one says, “Well, ‘da’ wasn’t really the correct phoneme sequence for ‘daddy,’ so I’m not sure this is working.” We lean in, we light up, we say “That’s right, DADDY!” - and we do it whether or not it was intentional, whether or not they meant to say it, whether or not they’ll say it again tomorrow.
We attribute meaning, celebrate the attempt, and create a feedback loop that says: making sounds gets a response. Over time, that feedback loop teaches language.
AAC users, most of whom have had little to no experience with babbling/trying sounds and getting reactions, deserve the same loop.
“They haven’t had that stage of exploring and babbling and really trying to understand what is this in front of me and how do I use it and what does it mean,” Rachel said. “We have to give them that.”
Honoring communicative intent means treating every reach toward the device, every tap on a symbol - whether or not it’s the “right” word in the “right” moment - as communication because it is! It’s an initiation.
What Communicative Intent Looks Like Across Stages
One of the most useful things you can do for your team is to help them understand that “intent” doesn’t look the same at every stage of AAC development. Here’s a framework for what to look for and celebrate at each level.
Stage 1: Pre-Intentional - Any Engagement with the Device
What it looks like:
- Looking at or orienting toward the device
- Reaching toward or touching the device in any way
- Any vocalization while in contact with the device
- Carrying or moving the device independently
What it means: The device is becoming part of their world. They are noticing it, orienting to it, treating it as an object that matters. This is the foundation of everything.
How to celebrate it:
“Did you see that? She reached for it. That’s her telling us she knows it’s there.”
What NOT to say: “She didn’t actually press anything, though.” (This shuts down the team’s investment before it starts.)
Stage 2: Intentional but Exploratory (Activating Symbols Without Apparent Context)
What it looks like:
- Pressing symbols repeatedly, seeming to enjoy the auditory output
- Pressing random symbols and watching for a reaction
- Activating a symbol and then looking up - at you, at a parent, at the room
What it means: They are discovering that the device produces output. They are experimenting with cause and effect. The “look up” after activation is especially significant - that’s social referencing. That’s communication.
How to celebrate it:
“He pressed ‘open’ and then looked right at me. He wanted to see what I’d do. That’s him using the device to connect with another person. That’s huge.”
What NOT to say: “He’s just pressing random things.” (There is no such thing as random pressing for a student who is learning to communicate. Every press is information.)
Stage 3: Contextually Linked (Activating Symbols Related to the Situation)
What it looks like:
- Pressing “more” when something they like is paused
- Activating “help” when they’re struggling
- Selecting a symbol related to what they’re seeing, touching, or doing
What it means: They are connecting symbols to meaning in context. This is the moment most teams are waiting for, but it arrives faster when stages 1 and 2 are celebrated rather than dismissed.
How to celebrate it:
“She pressed ‘more’ right after I stopped the music. She knew. She used her device to ask me for something. That is a full communicative act.”
Stage 4: Multi-Symbol and Novel Combinations
What it looks like:
- Combining two or more symbols
- Using the device in a new context without being prompted
- Producing a symbol combination that no one modeled directly
What it means: Generative language is emerging. The student is not just retrieving stored phrases; they are building meaning with the system.
How to celebrate it: At this point, most teams need no coaching on celebration. But you can help them connect this moment back to stage 1:
“Remember when she used to just carry it around the room? Look at her now.”
The Team’s Role: SLPs as Progress Narrators
One of the most important things Rachel said in our conversation was this:
“The way that we frame success as SLPs helps the entire team feel good about what we’re doing. They’re really looking to us to understand: what does progress look like? What is success here?”
This is not a small responsibility. The team’s motivation to keep modeling, to keep trying, to keep showing up with the device depends almost entirely on whether they believe the work is producing results. And they can only believe that if someone is narrating the results they can’t yet see on their own.
Your job is not just to observe communicative intent. It’s to name it, out loud, in the room, in a way that makes everyone around you feel the momentum.
That means:
Saying it when you see it. Don’t wait for a formal check-in. When you’re in the classroom and you see a Stage 2 moment, say something right then. “Did everyone see that? He pressed a symbol and looked up. That’s him communicating.”
Sending the quick win. A 15-second video clip. A one-line text to the para. “He used his device during centers today - wanted you to know.” Small acknowledgments compound into sustained buy-in.
Connecting small wins to the bigger arc. Teams lose motivation when progress feels invisible. Help them see where today’s reach fits in the journey: “We’ve been modeling ‘go’ for six weeks. Today he said it on his own. That’s what six weeks of your work looks like.”
The One-Page Team Reference:
What Does Progress Look Like?
Print this and put it somewhere the team will actually see it.
What AAC Progress Looks Like Resource
AAC progress is mostly invisible to the people who are working the hardest to make it happen like the para who models at snack, the teacher who keeps the device charged, and the family who tries the word of the week even when they’re not sure they’re doing it right.