David R. Beukelman, Ph.D is the Barkley Professor of Communication Disorders at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Director of Research and Education of the Communication Disorders Division, Munroe/Meyer Institute of Genetics and Rehabilitation at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, A research partner in the Rehabilitation Engineering and Research Center in Augmentative and Alternative Communication, and a senior researcher in the Institute for Rehabilitation Science and Engineering at the Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital. With Pat Mirenda, he co-authored the textbook, Augmentative and Alternative Communication: Management of Severe Communication Disorders in Children and Adults. He served as editor of the Augmentative and Alternative Communication Journal for four years. Janice Light, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Communication Disorders at the Pennsylvania State University. She is actively involved in research, personnel preparation, and service delivery in the area of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). Her primary interest has been furthering understanding of the development of communicative competence and self-determination by individuals who require AAC. Dr. Light is the principal investigator on several federally-funded research grants to improve outcomes for individuals who have significant communication disabilities through the use of augmentative and alternative communication. She is one of the project directors in the Augmentative and Alternative Communication Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (AAC-RERC), a virtual research consortium funded by the National Institute for Disability and Rehabilitation Research. In 1996, Dr. Light was recognized as the Don Johnston Distinguished Lecturer by the International Society of Augmentative and Alternative Communication for her leadership in the AAC field. In 1999, she received the Dorothy Jones Barnes Outstanding Teaching Award at the Pennsylvania State University. Laura J. Ball, Ph.D., is Director of Hearing and Speech Research at Children's National Health System and Professor at The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Washington, DC. She completed her doctorate at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with specialization in motor speech disorders and augmentative and alternative communication. She has more than 35 years' experience as a clinical speech-language pathologist. Her research addresses AAC and neuromotor speech d