Sec. 2. Findings
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Congress makes the following findings: For individuals with disabilities, the lack of the ability to effectively communicate is a high predictor of poor school and post-school outcomes and creates a serious risk for abuse and neglect. No student is too severely disabled to benefit from communication devices, services, and other supports. Students with the most significant cognitive and sensory disabilities can learn to use symbolic, augmentative, or alternative communication devices, services, or supports in 6 months or less.
Students with significant disabilities affecting communication too often enter school without communication systems that allow for participation in typical curricular activities and without the tools necessary for academic instruction and participation. National professional organizations have identified lack of training in augmentative and alternative communication devices, services, and supports and assistive technology for students with low-incidence disabilities as one of the greatest challenges to providing supports to students with significant disabilities affecting communication.
Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (including its implementing regulations) requires local educational agencies to ensure that communication with students with hearing, vision, or speech disabilities is as effective as communication with students without disabilities. To ensure this effective communication, schools must provide auxiliary aids and services where necessary to provide effective communication. Communication is both a basic human need and right of all human beings.
For individuals without access to the means for meaningful communication, this right is denied. The leadership of individuals with significant disabilities affecting communication is essential to achieving solutions and obtaining supports that improve, for such individuals, communication access and participation in the decisions most impacting their lives.