Kayla Ireland: Empowering Total Communication

This week, we share Rachel’s interview with Kayla Ireland! Kayla is a podcaster, college student, AAC User, and advocate who lives with cerebral palsy and epilepsy. She amplifies diverse voices through her shows, shares her personal communication journey, and the value of developing multiple modes of communication! Key Ideas This Week: The power of mindset and belief — Rachel shares how her mother’s cancer journey has shown the importance of optimism, presence, and reframing difficult experiences. She connects this lesson to her professional work, emphasizing that believing in someone’s potential can transform outcomes. Communication is multimodal — Kayla Ireland highlights that AAC is not just about devices. She uses a blend of sign language, fingerspelling, body language, vocalizations, and technology. Her advice is to use total communication and not force a hierarchy of methods. Efficiency and individuality in AAC use — Kayla explains that one or two words can carry the meaning of a full sentence, and sometimes spelling or gestures are faster than devices. She encourages professionals to respect user preferences and contexts rather than strictly focusing on grammar or pre-programmed systems. Visit talkingwithtech.org for weekly episodes, transcripts, and resources to help speech-language pathologists, caregivers, and communication partners tailor technology for people with complex communication needs! Join the Talking With Tech Patreon to get exclusive benefits like bonus guest‐interview episodes, behind-the-scenes videos, giveaways, and priority answers to your AAC questions to help you sharpen your skills and confidence in AAC!

You can listen to Kayla Ireland: Empowering Total Communication online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Kayla Ireland: Empowering Total Communication is an episode from Talking With Tech AAC Podcast by Rachel Madel and Chris Bugaj.

This episode is 42:54 long.

This episode was published on Sep 25, 2025.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Talking With Tech AAC Podcast when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.