Thank you for your willingness to participate in AAC in the Cloud 2026! This is our 10th year of hosting this free online conference, and we are so excited! If you haven't presented with us before, please know that we will do whatever we can to make this a positive experience for you and for attendees, and that you can ask us any questions or provide suggestions.
Submissions are open now until March 20. If you need more time than that please email brian@openaac.org
AAC in the Cloud hopes to be an inclusive environment for both attendees and presenters. If you have had a negative experience in the past, please consider submitting a presentation again as things have changed on the organizational side.
This year we are adjusting the presentation tracks. There will still be a track for families and supporters, one for practitioners and teachers, and the third track this year is reserved for sessions directed to AAC users. This is a new idea for this conference (and from what we can tell AAC conferences in general), so it may take some extra effort for us to fill this third track. Please seriously consider whether your planned session could be adjusted to speak directly to AAC users. Note that this track is *for* AAC users, not *by* AAC users, and presenters who use AAC are likely to want their session slated for one of the other two tracks. Here are some ideas of topics that could be meaningful for AAC users to hear:
- Strategies for handling isolation and loneliness as an AAC user
- How literacy learning can improve your AAC experience
- Communication breakdown and repairs using common AAC devices
- Examples of self-advocacy
- Neurodiversity and its affect on AAC vocabulary organization
- Finding the right balance of core and fringe vocabulary
- Taking control of your AAC vocabulary organization
- Why you should consider AAC even though you can talk
- Leveraging AI as an AAC user
- Lessons I want to pass on to other AAC users
- Overcoming social anxiety around using AAC with peers
AAC User-Track sessions can be targeted at any age or proficiency level, full-time or part-time AAC users, etc. Because this is our first time there will be some discomfort, you can switch to speaking to a more general audience partway through your session if that makes you feel more comfortable, but please at least start by speaking to AAC users directly.
Presenters are allowed to present their session live via Zoom, or to pre-record their session using the authoring tool of their choice. Pre-recorded sessions can still be slated for a time slot in the schedule, and their video will be released real-time for all viewers, so it shouldn't be that different than presenting live. We recommend that pre-recorded presenters still join the chat for their session so they can participate and answer real-time questions as they arise.
Once submissions are closed we will begin reviewing and you will be notified either way if your session was accepted or not. We are very excited to see new and old faces presenting, and we hope this answers most of your questions, but if not feel free to reach out!
