Aphasia Awareness Month Poster Goes Digital

Every year, the aphasia community produces a poster to mark Aphasia Awareness Month. This year, the poster has gone digital due to printing, postage and mailing list costs. By removing these financial barriers, it is able to travel farther, reaching people outside of the speech therapist’s office.

Why Digital?

As Kathryn Shelley, Aphasia Access board president and one of the creators of the poster, points out:

Digital puts the power back into the hands of people who understand the dire need to spread awareness of aphasia. With a click, they can share a product with a message that can make a difference.

In other words, you get to participate this year, too.

The Future of the Poster

In addition, multiple organizations including American Speech-Language Hearing Association, National Stroke Association, Lingraphica, Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, and more are helping get word out. Moreover, Shelley states,

At the end of June, we’ll unveil a revised poster for continual year-round use. Our hope is that professional organizations and individual people will print, post and share the poster, swap out their own Facebook banners, and forward the sample social media posts. Imagine the impact we would make if we all took action, mirroring the fact that aphasia affects millions, and that its silencing aftermath can be improved with four simple actions.

Removing Barriers

Those actions are the four communication strategies outlined on the poster. The idea is to remove communication barriers in the same way that people have removed physical barriers over the years. If we can add ramps or signs in Braille, we can also educate the general public about aphasia and make communication smoother for those within the aphasia community.

Aphasia Access offers professional networking, training, and products for use within hospital, rehabilitation, and community-based programs. Their services support healthcare providers, speech-language pathologists, and educators so they can best serve people with aphasia.

You can support their work and spread Aphasia Awareness by downloading the poster and disseminating it online.