• an approach to deaf education that teaches the child to use a variety of skills to communicate with others, skills taught might include:
  • listening
  • signing
  • gesturing
  • talking
  • reading lips

Raising Deaf Kids discusses Total Communication (TC), what happens in a TC program, how to choose a TC program, and more...

Total Communication is a philosophy and not a mode of communication.

Visual Phonics

• a system of 45 hand cues and written symbols created as a way to visually and kinesthetically represent the sounds of spoken language
• originally developed for use with deaf and hard of hearing students, visual phonics is gaining popularity in use with struggling readers, ELL (English Language Learners) students, students with learning disabilities, students with autism, and during speech-lanugage therapy sessions

See-the-Sound Visual Phonics provides more information on the use of visual phonics and trainings in your area.

Visual Phonics is a tool for representing the sounds of spoken language and should not be used for communication.

Cued Speech

• visual communication system in which the mouth movements of speech are paired with visual "cues," handshapes and locations near the mouth, represent the sounds of spoken language

At cuedspeech.com you can learn more about cued speech, buy products, videos, games, teaching and learning tools, and join or donate to the National Cued Speech Association.

SimCom or Simultaneous Communication

• technique in which both a spoken language and a manual variation of that language (such as English and Manually Coded English) are used simultaneously