Acknowledgements

We would like to dedicate this website to all of the students and their families who participated in our research and thereby helped us to develop this curriculum. Thank you for allowing us to be a part of your lives and for sharing your experiences with us so willingly. This website would not have been possible without you.

We are also very grateful to the Penn State undergraduate and graduate students who have worked on this project. We consider ourselves so fortunate to have the opportunity to work with such a talented group of individuals. We are especially grateful to the following current and former students: Megan Amrein, Elizabeth Benedek-Wood, Julia Birmingham, Maggie Case, Karen Fallon, Samantha Horochak, Jennifer Jansen, Lauren Karg, Line Kristiansen, Josh Mason, Jennifer May, Diane Millar, Leora Miller, Michelle Penna, Emily Quinn, Jessica Rose, Chaya Stark, Christina Weaver, Marissa Weyer, and April Yorke. Without these students this curriculum would not have been realized.

We wish to acknowledge the federal funding that we received to support this project. This literacy curriculum was developed and evaluated through a research grant (#H133E030018) funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) as part of the AAC-RERC. The contents do not necessarily represent the policy of NIDRR and you should not assume endorsement by the federal government.

This project is part of the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Communication Enhancement (The AAC-RERC). We have been privileged to be a part of the AAC-RERC and we are grateful for the feedback and support of our partners in the center.

The development of this curriculum rests firmly on the shoulders of many scholars in the area of literacy instruction generally and in augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) specifically. We appreciate the efforts of these researchers who have worked diligently to advance knowledge and improve literacy outcomes.

We are grateful to Dynavox Mayer Johnson, Inc. for their assistance disseminating this curriculum in print and software versions - the Accessible Literacy Learning (ALL) curriculum.

Janice Light and David McNaughton
Penn State University

Last Updated: August 31, 2012