Tony Papoulias

I am the father of an autistic nonverbal "speller' young adult male . My son has been working with a "speller" advocate for over 2years now and ,with his instructor's help , we are now learning that our son has much to say. My wife and I had been told since our son was 4 years old that he would never develop speech and likely would be profoundly intellectually disabled for his entire life with no more than a 4 years old intellect. It was because he could not speak that his physicians and others assumed that he then was permanantly intellectually disabled and treated him as such. Through my son's S2C( Spell to Communicate) communications partner we have for the first time in our son's life had hope that he might in fact gain a method of full communication. We are learning that he is in fact very intelligent but has been locked in a shell of a body with no means of telling those around him that he understands all that everyone has been saying to him for all of these many years and has learned and has more knowledge by simply listening.. Please support this Bill . If this law had been in effect while my son was in the school system 20 years ago ,my son might now have the full ability to effectively communicate . Parents now should have S2C and other augmentative communication resources available as a resource for their sons or daughters and inclusion in their school's Individual Education Plan. This Bill would give them the right to ask for these resources and insist that school systems provide this opportunity which my son never had.