The Development of a Communication Assessment Paradigm for use with Traditionally Underserved Deaf Adults

Within the congenitally deaf population there exists a sizeable number of individuals who are considered to be traditionally underserved. These individuals are characterized by severe communication deficits irrespective of modality (e.g., speech, sign language, reading, writing). Unfortunately, there are few evaluators, and fewer assessment protocols, available to assess the communication skills of this population. Addressing this issue, this paper will describe this population, discuss limitations associated with current communication assessment strategies, and subsequently provide a model to structure communication assessment built upon a functionally based, ecological perspective