New SHS faculty member advancing communication for individuals with disabilities
By ADELYN MUI
Savanna Brittlebank has dedicated her academic career to improving communication for individuals with complex needs. As a new faculty member in the Department of Speech and Hearing Science in the College of Applied Health Sciences, she brings knowledge and experience to the field of augmentative and alternative communication, or AAC.
AAC refers to a range of methods that people use to communicate, other than spoken language. It includes gestures, symbols, pictures, writing or use of electronic devices to express thoughts, needs and wants.
Brittlebank first became interested in AAC after working with children who had trouble communicating. She initially majored in psychology but worked extensively with individuals with disabilities. One of the reasons she decided to come to the University of Illinois is that she values the robust resources that the university has.
“There's a lot of opportunity as well for expansion of my research because there is just a strength across different disciplines of the research that's going on,” Brittlebank said. “The university really values that and has a lot of support to kind of push that growth as well, which drew me here. I keep learning more and more.”
Brittlebank recalled a time when she worked with a 3-year-old girl who was hearing-impaired and blind. The child also had an intellectual and developmental disability and no speech.
“She was still developing language, and I didn't know what to do,” Brittlebank said. “I didn't know how to best support her communication. Whenever I spoke to my supervisors and when I looked in the research, there really wasn't anything. I realized I wasn't the only one who didn't know how to help this population. I realized that's more where my passion was, and so I went back and studied further, and I’ve focused on research on that ever since.”
Brittlebank grew up in Zimbabwe and completed her BSc Hons (comparable to a U.S. bachelor’s degree) at University of York in England before coming to the United States to complete her M.S. at Pennsylvania State University. After her M.S., she worked clinically in Wisconsin as a speech-language pathologist, then returned to Penn State for her Ph.D. From there, she made her way to Illinois as an assistant professor in SHS.
“University of Illinois is one of the most disability-friendly campuses,” Brittlebank said. “There's so many different resources available for individuals with disabilities, and there's so much accessibility, more so than I've seen in a lot of other places. That was really encouraging considering I often work with people with disabilities who have limited speech.”
Since joining the university in fall 2024, Brittlebank has been in the process of getting new projects up and running and finishing old ones. She said one of her goals is to expand the accessibility of these interventions in lower-resource communities. In late April, Brittlebank received an award from the Campus Research Board for her project titled “Communication Partner Training to Support Language Outcomes in Children with Significant Disabilities.” This intervention research will investigate the effectiveness of training communication partners (e.g., paraprofessionals, direct support staff) of young children with significant challenges in both speech and motor abilities (i.e., multiple disabilities) in an evidence-based strategy to enhance child language outcomes.
In addition to access for lower-resource communities, Brittlebank also said that AAC is still moving forward in terms of representation for different cultures and different languages.
“AAC can be particularly challenging. I think one of the biggest barriers is access to technology,” Brittlebank said. “We can definitely support communication with photographs or with writing, but a lot of what's out there as well is access to these computer- or tablet-like systems where you can access the internet. Families might not have it readily in the home as it’s a more costly system.”
Brittlebank has worked on projects such as Transition to Literacy or T2L, a software that provides dynamic speech and text output upon selecting a graphic symbol. She said that traditional systems can be limiting—if every single word is not programmed, an individual cannot say everything that they want. However, the T2L feature helps support literacy by teaching individuals.
“It's the idea that it's an additional support to direct literacy instruction, but it's a great way that it can be embedded and someone can get exposure to literacy learning throughout the day,” Brittlebank said.
Brittlebank said literacy is powerful: if an individual has the alphabet, they can say anything they want.
“Literacy, in this day and age as well—it really enables social communication and building friendships. If someone has trouble with speech, and then they have trouble with communication, that has a series of impacts from not being able to engage in education or limiting employment opportunities and limiting the ability to make friendships,” Brittlebank said. “It's really important to make sure that individuals have access to language and communication and have appropriate access to language and communication.”