AAC Zine (repost)

aac zine (repost)

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Made: May 22, 2025.

My ko-fi! (link)

And, just as a PSA, I do not identify with the term nonverbal/speaking anymore! I used to be, but with speech therapy I have managed to get to the point I am semispeaking. This zine was made while I was using that label, which is why I use it at the end of the zine.

Being nonverbal feels like being an outsider in your own community

I go look at posts about verbality. And so many of them are fully speaking people posting about verbal shutdowns, or altverbal people who can still speak a good amount. I can barely find any nonverbal posts

I go to look at posts about AAC instead. And it’s lots of posts of people asking how to be more comfortable with using AAC around others. Which I can’t answer, I was forced to because when I became nonverbal I had no other choice

So I just decide to look at the nonverbal tag instead. And it is filled with posts saying OP “goes nonverbal”

I try to correct them. They are using the term wrong. They tell Me that “that’s not what nonverbal means” and that I, as a nonverbal person, am wrong about My own identity/disability

I get upset. I make My own post about being nonverbal instead. It is My own space. But instead, speaking people reply to Me telling Me I am “using nonverbal wrong” and that I am actually nonspeaking or mute, not nonverbal

I give up. It’s so hard to find spaces for nonverbal people. It always either also includes speaking altverbal people or people speaking over us

And this is just My perspective, I can’t imagine how it feels for people who could never speak to begin with

(This is not to say speaking altverbal people can’t have their own spaces. But it is hard as a nonverbal person to find My own)

voice locked (another name for verbal shutdown)

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I, and i/dd nonverbal person, care about it irl. My nonverbal friends care about it irl. Activists care about it irl.

And insinuating a disabled person must advocate for something “irl” for it to be considered real, is ableism.

Just saw someone call themselves “partially nonverbal”.

I think it’s so funny that people are genuinely allergic to using terms like semi-verbal, demi-verbal, and minimally speaking.

Nonverbal has a meaning. Nonverbal means cannot speak at all for a period of years or someone’s lifetime. Stop adding words onto the word nonverbal, to try and make it mean something different.

saying it again, louder this time:

DNI if u treat semiverbal and nonverbal like things you can switch on and off. DNI if u create or use ableist terms

im semiverbal. i struggle to speak, form my sentences from my thoughts coherently and so on

DEMIverbal is not a medical term, it is a community term and it demedicalises the terms for verbal shutdowns and speech loss episodes

just because i also experience speech loss episodes does not mean im demiverbal instead of semiverbal, because demiverbal is not a diagnostic tool. its a community term.

there is a word for it already and demedicalising verbality terms harms those of us who are semiverbal or nonverbal or have speech loss episodes and verbal shutdowns

u dont go nonverbal. ur not semiverbal because u experience verbal shutdowns. demiverbal is a community term that bastardises these MEDICAL TERMS

there was also a big issue in the DID community of folks calling their parts “semiverbal” or “nonverbal”

as ive said on here before we recommend using terms like “non communicative” or “mute” if its not a system wide issue

if it IS a system wide issue then semiverbal and nonverbal are the correct terms. verbality is to do with cognition and affects the person as a whole, not individual alters

altverbal

not really a coining post but you know what. anything can be a coining post if you think about it!

anyway introducing the term “altverbal”. general umbrella / catchall for “verbal in a nonstandard way” or whatever. i find it particularly useful to describe members who are commonly

possible uses:

• speaking in rhyme
• word salad
• talking in circles / “psychosis speak”
• speaking with unconventional syntax, such as only using passive voice
• speaking in the second or third person
• anything else

this generally doesn’t include typing quirks, they change how the text is written, not how the whole sentence is constructed. i cant really stop you tho do what you want forever.

i made this term up, something similar may already exist. the lion does not concern itself

no flag bc its 3am but i’d be happy to see one :)

ok thats all. back into the inactivity pit

It’s really funny the things my brain does (sarcasm)

Been doing real well with speech lately, right? Made a whole post was so proud.

BOOM

hours without verbal speech available .

This is me rn:

got off work and haven’t been able to speak since getting home, assuming it’s just from being tired from working 4 days in a row all late at night but like jeez

“Just Switch Then!”

Being a semiverbal or nonverbal headmate in an otherwise (usually) verbal system is a special kind of hell. I can only reliably speak with my mouth 10-20% of the time, and that’s including when I need to shorten and simplify phrases from things like “want to go get a drink with me?” to “drink?” or from “have you put the clothes away yet?” to “clothes done?”–something that’s noticeable as hell by people around me almost as much as being unable to speak at all.

I normally have a friend cofront to speak for me, and I’m lucky I have someone I trust so much to do that. Trusting someone to be your voice isn’t a small task and it’s not something easily done. I could use AAC but it’s a lot of effort to set up and I have minimal time to do it, and mostly everyone in my physical IRL sphere would straight up mock or ignore me for it. Explaining that I’m a semiverbal headmate and need tools to talk would result in “can’t you just get someone else to talk to us then?”–something that’s happened before for other situations. The effort to put into it vs the expected outcome means it’s easier to just not talk to friends, family, or be around people when I’m fronting. I can’t have a social life outside of my own brain and our partner system, and certain select online friends.

I can’t go shopping alone because if I need to be spoken to, I can’t answer. I can’t make appointments we need to make because it requires a phone call. I can’t go to the movies because I need to tell them what one I want to see. I can’t order food because I need to tell them what I want to order. There’s so many things I can’t do because I can’t talk and have no support for it outside of letting another headmate take over my life and do it for me.

We have no “proof” to “justify” to others (such as employers or educational facilities) why sometimes we might need support with our verbality, either. The non/semiverbal people in this system aren’t represented in our medical records because we’re headmates and not the whole “unified person”. We’re not “person enough” to have anything we experience count. It feels like it’s just seen as “that part of you is a little fucked up”. We’re doing a sign language course for me next month because I front so much and it’s a skill we want to learn anyway, and I need to have someone else front with me for a thing we’re learning for me because there’s no way we as a generally speaking person will be supported for me specifically to take that course. You need medical records, proof, a note, something. I can’t get that. I can’t even get the needed support to be able to communicate in ways I’m able to because I’m not enough of a “person”. People have to learn that for me too.

There’s so much independance that’s stripped from me and it’s made worse by a general mindset being “You can switch voluntarily though right? Why not just switch?”. Yeah, we can switch on command. I can just hand over everything that gives me independance to another person. I can have everything done for me even though I want to do it myself. I could probably be okay with having to do that too but I’m fucking not. There’s support out there that I could benefit from but I just can’t access it because I’m not real enough. I’m not “really a person, just a part!”.

And you know what? Online and in the plural community isn’t much better, because I’ve had people tell me and my system before that we need to use “nonvox” or “semivox”–terms specifically for headmates as non/semiverbal equivalents–so I don’t take up space in communities not meant for me. Because even though I am semiverbal, I’m not enough of an individual person to be allowed to have space in those communities. No one has ever explained to us a reason I can’t use the words that describe me as a person for myself, without implying or outright saying that I just don’t count because I’m a headmate and not a singlet. If I was in the body of a singlet, there’d be no difference. I’m not claiming something I don’t have the rights to, if you see me as an actual fucking person. It’s so dehumanising and I’m sick of it. Just because I can switch and have someone do it for me doesn’t mean that’s not an infringement on my own independance and my ability to have a fucking life.

We’d rather walk with our cane than be carried everywhere and have no control over where they go–aside from relying on trusting that other person to listen to what we say. And I’d rather have supports in place for my own ways to communicate so that I don’t have to rely on trusting someone else to say everything for me. Maybe it’d be easier for others, but I don’t think the default entry point for being accepted should be to sit down and let yourself have no independance whatsoever instead of daring to want support to do things for yourself.

let us make reminder.

saying as an altverbal system (at least not fullverbal, but not nonverbal), we don’t “go” nonverbal. it is permanent state.

“but don’t you wish you could speak so you could…”

Excerpt:

“Questions I have been asked have included things like "Don’t you wish you could speak so you could ask for help if you needed it”

Ignoring that I literally am asking for help more effectively than I have ever before in memory, because I ask for help more effectively using AAC, am unlikely to ask for help in the first place even if I should, and if it is a situation that I am pushed to the point where I will need help immediately, I am unlikely to have ever been able to speak, there is absolutely no reason that asking for help is associated with speech anyways.

I have asked for help from people across the world because of the internet, and it didn’t matter that I wasn’t speaking. When in the same location, I have a tablet, that can vocalize, with multiple apps, depending on what my current communication needs are. In the past I have done things like using my medical alert bracelet to point out to people allergic reactions in order to get treatment. I can get help, I have got help, using all sorts of manners that aren’t speech, and generally find them much more effective for me.

But, speech is viewed as necessary for things as simple as asking for help. The idea of communication, of doing things at all, in other manners, even when I am actively doing so, doesn’t cross people’s minds. Fear, pressure, those are how people are interacting with me. Trying to scare me into how dangerous it is to not speak, this is the normal interactions I’m having.

I’m not being asked how I teach with AAC. I’m being asked don’t I want to speak again, so I can teach. Or told, I clearly need to be speaking because children would be afraid of my AAC. None of this has any relation to my reality, to what I do, have done for years. Saying children will be afraid of interacting with me because I’m disabled - I’m not less disabled when I’m speaking. I always have needed plans for suddenly switching to AAC, I have used it in the past, I’ve taught with AAC now, its not a huge challenge, it means somewhat different planning. It means planning that I need to put into things, in order to do anything, because others don’t expect for someone like me to exist at all. So, when others realize, they don’t as how, they assume its not possible, they assume I don’t exist. Yet again. Like always.

I’m asked, told, had it assumed, that speech is always easier. That speech would always be easier. Had it pressured upon me how much of a burden it must be to not have speech for even a moment. My truth is that I have been finding it immensely helpful. I have been finding it a time I can learn communication I have never managed in my life, no matter how much I have struggled, because speech has been so prioritized, at the cost of everything else, at the cost of whatever it does to me. I have found it is a time to not only heal from a concussion and not be so overwhelmed by the world because speech makes things so much more overwhelming, but to find ways to communicate better, long term, not in terms of new AAC apps, but in terms of, better understanding myself. Because speech isn’t always better, and I’ve known that, but I’ve not known how to respond to myself, how to respond to the world, when I have had speech pushed so hard.

I’m being told now, that speech is always easier, and yet, right now, when I’m not speaking, is the first time I’m being able to even start to think about making decisions about things like what I want to eat, what I want to do in the day, what makes sense to me rather than asking others what to do, because I am not so overwhelmed by trying to figure out how to say any ideas that might come to mind that I can’t get to the figuring it out. And these things, while they aren’t things I am consistent at, while they are difficult, while I am able to get bits and pieces out and not everything, are things that will help me later too, because I am finding other ways to communicate, even when those other ways are ways I have already known, because they are sorting, organizing, and having it make sense, the ways that things fit together. Because speech isn’t always best. And not speaking is sometimes meaning I can do more.“

Does anyone know if the term “semiverbal shutdown” is being used

I see a lot of people describe their verbal shutdowns as struggling to talk but can with effort, which I don’t feel matches verbal shutdown’s definition of literally cannot talk at all even with effort

But the term “semiverbal shutdown” makes more sense to Me here since a lot of semiverbal people describe their experience as it’s hard to talk but can if they put a good amount of effort into it

coining post :0

Lexifrag

A way of thinking and internally communicating through feelings, concepts, and images rather than words. Because the inner language is not in words, translating thoughts into spoken or written words can be difficult, slow, or uncomfortable.

People who are lexifrag may speak in short sentences, mix languages, etc. Experiences vary from person to person.

[this term was made for systems, but can be used by anyone! (UNLESS you are on our DNI </3) We coined this for one of our alters who didn’t want to use the term semiverbal/semispeaking]

flag!

[ 7 lined flag. First line is red and 2nd and 3rd get lighter. 4th is white. 5th is light blue and 6th and 7th get darker. Along it in zigzag formation is 7 lines that mirror the opposite color (the dark red is the dark blue and so on)] (sorry if this is bad we are bad at writing these lol)

Text post because I came to this realisation and I feel I should share:

This is gonna be controversial but there doesn’t need to be alternative terms for nonverbal/nonspeaking/etc for alters.

There’ve been a lot of attempts to coin better terms ( see vocal/voisic/vox ) but there’ve always been issues with these terms ( no shade to the coiners, they were trying their best ) and I tried myself to coin some but failed spectacularly. Eventually, I realised it was a lot easier to just write ‘can’t speak’ ‘only speaks when co’ ‘speaks little’ etc than to spend however long trying to find alternatives to nonverbal/nonspeaking/etc for alters.

I feel this method causes the least amount of friction with the general community of people who are actually nonverbal/nonspeaking/etc ( as a person who is myself semiverbal )

Didn’t say this the first time but I’m gonna add it so here’s a little edit: I can’t dictate what you use, I’m not calling people who use alternative terms anything, do what you want, I just feel this is a sentiment that is never said

Whether or not someone is correct to use a certain word to describe their experience or not aside (not having that argument on this post), I do think there is a marked difference between:

1.) People who genuinely don’t, or very rarely, experience situations where they cannot use speech to be understood misusing the word “nonverbal” just to make jokes, or to talk about being shy or tongue-tied. Using it as slang, essentially.

And,

2.) People who do experience being unable to use speech to be understood in certain situations, sometime a lot of situations, using the word “nonverbal” only to describe these times when they cannot use speech.

Whether or not you find it to be accurate or appropriate for group 2 to use that word to describe their experiences, I personally feel it’s a whole different situation than group 1, and too often they get conflated in a way that feels unfair to the experiences of group 2.

Yo nonverbals and semiverbals I’m asking you because I don’t wanna be insensitive. I have an idea of something to describe me that I’ve just called “weird-verbal”. For example if your status of verbality is not easy to describe, is so dependent on so many different variables, or your thoughts are not verbally translatable. So basically it just means your verbality is weird and maybe complicated. Can I coin this or is there already a term?

With alexithymia and interoception issues being common with autistic people, I’m not surprised there’s some who conceptualize their speech difficulties or gradual complete loss of functional speech as “not wanting to talk”, or even as a choice they’re making, regardless of how truly voluntary it really is.

That indefinable “Don’t want to talk” feeling is sometimes the first warning signs of not being ABLE to, at all, for some people: both in the acute sense of immediate verbal shutdowns, and the more long term sense of gradual partial or total loss of speech.

I think the dismissal of it ever possibly being serious is a problem. Obviously not everyone who cannot use speech has this experience, and nor does everyone who loses speech in some form, but it is one of many authentic experiences, however comparatively uncommon.

When someone, especially someone whose already had issues with communication or language, suddenly tells you they don’t feel good when they talk, listen. Aside from autism, also, acute speech loss can be a sign of something that may be serious and needs to be addressed.

People can only use the words and language they already know to try and describe whats happening to them. For some that is getting very specific, learning the most technically-accurate terms and the latest scientific explanations for what’s happening to them. For others, though, they won’t have that knowledge or language for one reason or another. Some may not be able to fully understand whats happening to them without support of others or specific resources. Some may never be able to - but they know themselves, what they can and can’t do, and need ways to communicate that to others not only for understanding, but also safety.

Drawing arbitrary lines and nitpicking the specific wording or terms people might use to describe their speech loss doesn’t seem to be about helping people figure out what they need to communicate effectively, especially people who have a disability that can greatly effect language skills, communication, and the ability to assess internal states.

An understanding of what the “correct” words to use may never come for someone, but there will usually be a way to improve communication anyways. At that point, the people are the important part, not the words we label them with. Words are just a tool to try and convey a concept, to get something done, and you can’t guarantee that a word will mean the same thing to every person who receives it.

And, if someone finds that giving up speech as primary communication is too difficult, they will naturally drift back towards it. If other communication is not more effective (or less painful, disgregulating, tiring, etc) than speech, then the path of least resistance will win out.

Being unable to rely on verbal speech is hard. It’s scary. It’s frustrating. It can often be dangerous in ways that most people would never even think about.

If someone “willingly” goes through the troubles associated with not being able to use speech, then how easy was speech for them to use in the first place?

How effective of a communication method could it have possibly been for them?

How long were they hiding and compensating for it before it became too much to bear?

How much a choice is there, really?

Does it really matter, at that point, whether they know if it was a “choice” or not?

Text to speech apps should NOT have advertisements. Just saying.

Speech loss episodes are so much worse when you have just a phone and then there’s an ad so you can’t even speak.

Lots of love to my fellow folks who struggle with verbality, no matter the reason.

Also, if anyone has trustworthy resources on different states of verbality and good tts sites/apps please let me know and I’ll do my best to spread the word after trying them myself. God I’m so tired.

does anyone have any records/evidence of nonverbal being a term for a permanent state then getting co-opted by people experiencing verbal shutdowns? i realized i’ve never seen a source

i’m completely on board with it being a permanent thing for the record, i just struggle to follow rules without a good reason/evidence, and i figure it would also just be good to have on hand to link to people who use the term “going nonverbal” (i’m verbal myself and probably not the best person to explain)

sorry if this is worded disrespectfully, let me know if there’s anything i’ve said wrong and i’ll fix it

edit: forgot about this post. i found an explanation since then

Autism + verbality userboxes 🙂‍↕️🍀.!

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Reposted from our Instagram (@ cleme.core) again. Free to use. Credit appreciated but not needed! 🤍.