Textbook: AAC in the Schools - Best Practices for Intervention

Gloria Soto, PhD

Dr. Gloria Soto is a Professor at San Francisco State University with a joint appointment in the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences and the Department of Special Education. She is the co-director of Project AAC for ALL, a personnel preparation project to train Speech, Language Therapists and Special Education Teachers on the provision of AAC to dual language learners with disabilities.  

Dr. Soto specializes in augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). Her research focuses on language development and intervention for children and youth who use AAC, inclusive educational practices, and the provision of AAC services to children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Current research projects involve the development of best practices for the equitable provision of AAC services to ‘minoritized’ students, the investigation of discourse-based interventions on the linguistic skills of children and youth who use AAC, the validation of a protocol for the analysis of aided language samples in Spanish, and vocabulary selection for bilingual Spanish-English users of AAC.

Among Dr. Soto’s publications are numerous articles and two books about the provision of AAC services in school settings, “Practically Speaking: Language, Literacy, and Academic Development for Students with AAC Needs” and “AAC in the Schools: Best Practices for Interventions.” She is a frequent invited speaker at National and International Conference.

Nancy B. Robinson, PhD, CCC-SLP, Professor Emerita

Nancy retired from San Francisco State University in the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences in the Graduate College of Education. With her colleagues, Drs. Gloria Soto and Patti Solomon-Rice, Dr. Robinson developed graduate specialization in Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) that includes a graduate certificate for speech-language pathologists, special educators and related professionals in AAC. Through a series of federal grants funded by the USDOE/Office of Special Education Programs, most recently Project AAC for ALL, Drs. Robinson & Soto have prepared speech-language pathologists and special educators to provide AAC services with children and youth with culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

Over the course of her career, Nancy served as Interdisciplinary Training Director at the Center for Disability Studies at the University of Hawaii from 1988-1998 where she collaborated in a number of personnel preparation grants funded by USDOE/OSERs focused on interdisciplinary disability studies. She also assisted in the development of the Maternal and Child Health Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities (MCH LEND) Program and participated with colleagues to assist teams in the US Pacific Jurisdictions to improve service systems for individuals with disabilities and their families. During her time in the California State University system from 1998-2019, first at Chico State and then San Francisco State, Nancy filled the roles of faculty member, department chair, associate dean and interim dean.