Helen Whittle
Communication Matters Chair of Board of Trustees
Job title: Chair of the Board of Trustees
Organisation: Communication Matters
Event: The Communication Matters International AAC Conference
Date of the event: 11th – 13th September 2022
About the event:
The Communication Matters International AAC Conference is the UK’s leading event for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC), an alternative way of communicating instead of speech which includes gestures, eye gaze, vocalisations, sign language, and facial expressions.
As a registered charity with over 300 members, this year’s Communication Matters International AAC Conference welcomed 389 AAC users and processionals from 14 countries with a unique forum to receive their first face to face training in over two years and to discuss practical solutions, personal experiences, research and the latest clinical and technological developments.
About Helen:
As a speech and language therapist, Helen has worked in the field of AAC since 1991, where she started her career in an assessment centre. After 9 years, she worked as a local AAC therapist with a range of adult and child clients.
Helen’s career highlights include her position as a lecturer in the Speech Pathology Department at Manchester Metropolitan University, which allowed her to be involved in practical research projects such as the I-ASC Project, a three and a half year research project to improve the outcomes for children with little or no intelligible speech.
Helen has also coordinated a project working on enhancing the look and vocabulary range of a specific symbol set, worked as a tutor for online learning in Special Schools and developed training courses to support an AAC Care pathway.