Reading Assignment 5: Preparation Tips, Speaking Tips

Read the tips presented on this webpage, put together by Disability Belongs: https://www.respectability.org/faith-inclusion/inclusive-congregations/before/.

Then watch this video, and consider these tips for supporting those who area of struggle is speaking (from With Ministries): 

1. Find out more about the individual and how you can best provide tools to fit that person’s speaking needs (understand how the individual may use sign language or gestures, written words, pictures, a communication device; give a yes/no response; and so on). Remember that speaking differences do not indicate how the person takes information in. For example, a person who has had a stroke may struggle with pronouncing spoken words, but that individual may understand every word that is spoken by others. Another individual may have fluent speech but very little understanding of words that others speak. It’s important to gather this information before identifying solutions.
2. Give unhurried attention to a person who has difficulty speaking. Do not finish sentences for him or her.
3. The lessons in With Ministries' Together Bible study units often provide picture options so that individuals can point to a picture as a way to give an answer. If the individual has difficulty pointing but is able to look at a picture, simply cut the pictures apart and place them on the corners of a larger piece of paper. The person can then use a directed gaze to select a picture.
4. If an individual uses a communication device, it’s important to learn how it works. By giving an individual or their guardian advance information, it’s possible to enter many of the words or pictures the individual might need to meaningfully enter into a discussion.
5. Ask for a response that requires a gesture or movement for an answer instead of a spoken word. People with speech differences can give a head nod or shake, give a thumbs up or thumbs down response, or hold up a written response on a notecard or small whiteboard.