by Anthony Arnold, PRC-Saltillo Ambassador
I’m Anthony Arnold, an augmentative and alternative communicator from San Tan Valley, Arizona. When I went through school in the 1980s-90s, there were few resources to teach someone like me how to read and spell effectively. Therefore, my parents and teachers chose to send me down to the special education classroom, where I could receive personalized attention with reading and spelling. While this approach may sound suitable, I took a few weeks to complete a spelling and reading unit, and because I couldn’t vocalize words, I needed to take mental images of them, which was time-consuming. I fell further behind year after year, affecting me in subjects I once illustrated strength in, especially when a word wasn't programmed in my communication device, I needed to resort to spelling.
Matters came ahead a little in high school when I was introduced to word prediction on my communication device and computer, where I only needed to know the first few letters of a word. However, it wasn’t accurate, especially when I entered adulthood with responsibilities I didn’t have during my childhood, such as gaining employment and writing articles and papers for conferences. I always stuck with my stick speech and never expanded, showcasing my accurate intelligence, which was frustrating and embarrassing. Let’s say I was good at making excuses for not submitting papers to conferences, especially when asked to.
In the fall of 2022, I began hearing about this new artificial intelligence (AI) technology. At first, I didn’t think it could help me with spelling and grammar, but then I heard of a software called Grammarly, which was built on AI. I determined I should look at this to see how it might help my spelling deficit. Then, after a few months, I started noticing that I was more confident with writing and deploying a bigger vocabulary, and I wanted more and more the longer it went. I have also seen a significant improvement when generating language on my communication device, increasing my overall confidence with communication, which tells me it’s transferring over to all environments.
Grammarly is helping me because it’s a seamless add-on to Google Chrome and my other Apple devices, which are familiar environments. I’m writing this blog post using Google Drive, and Grammarly is on the side. AI instantly proofreads what I write and offers suggestions on spelling and how I might improve it. I have a virtual tutor on call 24/7, available anywhere on various devices. I would have loved to have had this available in school because it would have likely made a difference in learning different things. Now, with more accessible language, I feel communication barriers are knocked down, and I can explore more avenues I would have ignored previously.
Look at Grammarly or another AI program for anyone with significant language deficits, especially visible learners. Everyone can learn to read and write, even if some need to take a different path, especially at their own pace.
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