Rose, my dear colleague, I would recommend working with a speech and language pathologist who has knowledge and partnership with the Deaf and Deafblind community. Peggy Miller from the Texas School for the Deaf is Austin is a speech pathologist who is fluent in ASL but also teams with Deafblind teams. In the case that you are referring to, the student is using a formal communication and looking at Deaf, hearing and Deafblind language norms would be helpful for getting an assessment on his skills. Other questions to ask: Does he communicate with multiple partners? Using multiple forms? Does he have efficient ways to refuse, request, comment, inform/question. This student is very social and does he have access to peer partners who are Deaf, Deafblind and hearing? Does he have methods for communicating sometimes with hearing partners who don't sign? I know he has many partners who do sign and use TASL. There is also a researcher at Gallaudet University who I can put you in touch with but she is a linguist and not a practitioner. You are amazing, Rose! Keep doing it!

hi Rose. I might be asking more questions than giving suggestions.

How old is this student? are you looking for about expressive language measure, but not the Communication Matrix? because many of the assessments done with the Communication Matrix are profiles of students whow are deaf, non-speaking, who may or may not use formal sign language. In addition these are also students who have a range of vision. There is a large community here who are parents, teachers, and SLPs of children who are deaf-blind, with and without cognitive challenges.

It is also helpful to make sure that your message here is tagged with markers that they will search and find, so that they will respond to you. Im not sure I can do that from a response - but you can go back and edit your message & add tags. Especially Click on the Please Help tag. That let's the Matrix team know that you have a question .

Inot the meantime, I'll also forward this on to our consultants at Perkins and with the National Center for the Deaf-Blind.

Kelly

a member of the Communication Matrix Team