Adam was born and raised in the UK and now resides in Costa Rica. He has specialised in helping people who are non-speakers communicate in alternative ways to words. I invited Adam to write a piece about his work for this website.
Non-speakers across the world have been completely misunderstood and underestimated.
For the vast majority, their inability to communicate vocally isn’t because of a cognitive deficit. It’s a motor issue. That means all those non-speakers with autism, Angelman syndrome, cerebral palsy and more are listening to everything around them and understanding it all.
But, most are treated as if they have the intellectual level of a toddler. Nothing could be further from the truth and Faros Costa Rica is doing something about it.
For over two decades, Fabián had lived without the ability to rely on speech to communicate. For millions like him, it means every decision is made for you, every preference is ignored, every resultant moment of frustration treated as a behavioural problem so they must be disciplined.
Faros Costa Rica found Fabián in a local centre for people with disabilities in the tiny hilltop town of Zarcero. Founder Adam Bates introduced him to Spelling 2 Communicate (S2C) – a method of communication that bypasses the fine motor skills needed for speech, and instead coaches the gross motor skills required to point at letters on a letter board to spell thoughts and ideas.
From lesson one, he was already demonstrating he knew how to spell complex words that nobody had ever heard from him.
In July this year, Fabián became the first known Central American non-speaker to spell their first full sentence using entirely their own words.
He has a personality and a sense of humour just like everyone else! Asked what he’d do if he won $7m, he fought through laughter to respond “I would create new Crash Bandicoot videogames!”
On a serious note, breakthroughs like these not only help individuals communicate and for their families to finally understand their children/siblings etc. but it fundamentally changes perceptions around non-speakers.
31 million people worldwide with complex dyspraxia are assumed not to be intelligent and treated accordingly. In reality, non-speakers with access to Spelling to Communicate are graduating university, studying PhDs, writing theatre productions and following numerous other dreams.
Unfortunately, only 0.03% of the world’s non-speakers currently have access to this essential form of communication.
Faros Costa Rica is at the very beginning of its mission to expand access to Spelling to Communicate to the approximately 2 million non-speakers in Latin America. I am currently the only qualified S2C practitioner in the region.
To help me fulfil my goals of helping non-speakers communicate, Lynn has kindly donated some funds, to help me train a new practitioner, who across the coming decade will help me bring reliable communication to dozens more non-speakers.
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