To separate a self advocacy message from adult interpretation, preserve Kira's direct speech, AAC, writing, gesture, or action; Kira's stated meaning, uncertainty, and correction; and the partner's observation, paraphrase, inference, authority, response, and outcome in separate attributed fields. A caregiver, clinician, interpreter, support person, or software tool can help communication access. None should silently become the author of Kira's decision.
Preserve Kira's original message
Record Kira's own words, selected symbols, writing, sign, gesture, movement, or direct action with timing and context. Keep an audio, image, or exact quotation only when authorized and necessary.
Record access support without transferring authorship
Name device access, positioning, vocabulary, wait time, interpreter, communication partner, prompt, reading help, or motor support. Record what the supporter did and whether Kira confirmed the result.
Label every adult interpretation
Describe the observation before the hypothesis. Attribute paraphrase, inferred meaning, confidence, relationship, context knowledge, confirmation attempt, disagreement, correction, and unresolved status.
Protect uncertainty and changing meaning
Provide uncertain, mixed, changed, private, later, and no-answer options. A message can be valid without a complete explanation, and a later correction should preserve the original audit trail.
Use this sequence to protect authorship
Preserve Kira's message, document access support, attribute interpretations, seek accessible confirmation, record correction or uncertainty, protect privacy, route the decision, and retain the outcome.
Build Kira's message-authorship assessment
Create one versioned message-authorship assessment for the community radio workshop. Include Kira's priority and decision, message authorship and accessible communication, information, partner and power context, authority, ordinary supports, privacy, health and safety routes, eligible events, response stages, outcome, invalidity, missingness, withdrawal, alternatives, qualified owner, correction, action rule, and reassessment trigger. Store only purpose-needed information with role-limited access. Each entry should retain the original form, author, access support, exact or faithful record, partner paraphrase, purpose, urgency, privacy level, confirmation route, correction, decision owner, response, and outcome.
Validate Kira's evidence
Reproduce 24 authored messages: 10 AAC, five direct action, nine other modes; eight adult paraphrases with three confirmed, three corrected, and two uncertain. Verify author, form, support, meaning, inference, confirmation, correction, privacy, authority, and outcome.
Connect Kira's evidence to a decision
The workshop adds author, exact message, access support, paraphrase, confirmation, and correction fields. Only Kira-approved wording is used as Kira's position.
Work through Kira's example
Across 24 workshop messages, Kira authors 10 through AAC and five through direct action, leaving nine through speech, writing, or gesture. Adults add paraphrases in eight events. Kira confirms three paraphrases, corrects three, and marks two uncertain. Original messages remain intact beside every paraphrase. Preserve every planned and eligible event, authored message, information and access version, partner and power context, authority, response, repair, invalid record, correction, unresolved item, and outcome. This fictional example demonstrates one assessment control. It supplies no diagnosis, treatment effect, legal entitlement, accommodation decision, crisis clearance, coverage decision, or outcome guarantee for Kira.
Address Kira's main interpretation risk
Calling eight adult interpretations validated messages would ignore five corrected or uncertain meanings. Counting only speech would erase 15 authored messages. A fluent paraphrase can still change scope, urgency, privacy, or decision. Review communication and information access, partner availability, power, dependency, retaliation, relationship, authority, privacy, health, safety, task demand, observer effects, client priorities, and design strength separately. Agreement, eye contact, confident tone, speed, persistence, independence, or reduced disagreement cannot establish understanding, consent, safety, or self-advocacy.
Keep Kira's clinical scope explicit
For Kira's message-authorship assessment, the CASP public summary supplies high-level ABA behavioral-health-treatment scope for autistic people, with licensed detail outside this page. The current BACB Ethics Code addresses competence, client involvement, consent and assent when applicable, assessment, risk, data, documentation, confidentiality, and evaluation for covered people. The BACB outline is examination content. These sources do not create legal authority, accommodation entitlement, emergency power, or permission to replace Kira's message with adult preference.
Protect broad communication for Kira
ASHA's AAC portal says AAC users should always have access to their tools or devices. A 2026 systematic review of AAC research for autistic adults and children found that the literature still focused heavily on teaching requests and reported variable study quality and generalization evidence. This supports protecting Kira's broad communication purposes, including information, refusal, privacy, repair, and relationship messages, without treating one device or requesting outcome as a complete self-advocacy measure.
Treat self-advocacy evidence as emerging for Kira
A mini-review of self-advocacy and self-determination in autistic adolescents and young adults describes encouraging associations with education, employment, relationships, identity, self-concept, and quality of life. The authors state that they did not use a systematic search because the literature is emerging. The review supplies concepts and research questions, not a causal estimate, universal curriculum, or prediction about Kira.
Scope disability-access sources for Kira
The U.S. Department of Justice effective-communication guidance explains duties for covered Title II and Title III entities and directs attention to the communication's nature, length, complexity, context, and the person's usual method. The Title III regulations address public accommodations, including reasonable modifications, effective communication, rule-specific limits, and safety requirements based on actual risk rather than stereotypes. Exact applicability, requested modification, decision process, defenses, and remedies require qualified legal or access review; an ABA assessment cannot promise a result for Kira.
Preserve participation, assent, and safety for Kira
The UK NICE NG11 recommendations address people with learning disabilities whose behavior challenges and emphasize participation, understandable information, communication, health, environment, choice, respectful support, quality of life, and least-restrictive practice. These considerations organize Kira's questions but are not U.S. authority or a universal self-advocacy protocol. Breaux and Smith propose individualized assent and withdrawal procedures in an evolving literature; their paper is practice guidance, not a separate BACB mandate. For danger or a medical emergency in the United States, SAMHSA directs people to call 911 or go to the nearest emergency room; routine assessment must not delay emergency, protective, or mandated action.
Choose Kira's next bounded action
Kira can revise a message or limit who sees it. Disputed meaning remains unresolved rather than assigned by adult consensus. Record the qualified owner, evidence, effective date, message and information version, partner and authority, privacy and safety route, implementation check, accessible explanation, disagreement or complaint path, and reassessment trigger. Preserve the earlier record when decisions, access, relationships, authority, health, safety, or priorities change.
Close Kira's assessment
Review the message-authorship assessment with Kira, the qualified behavior analyst, relevant partners, access owners, and specialists named in the manifest. Confirm that authorship, communication, information, partner, power, authority, response, privacy, safety, and outcome remain separate; every denominator is reproducible; AAC, basic needs, prescribed care, refusal, change of mind, and safe exit remain protected; urgent needs received action; and conclusions stay bounded to sampled decisions. Keep this page draft and noindex until every required review is complete.
Related resources
- How to Assess Requests for Information and Clarification
- How to Define a Self-Advocacy Assessment Question
- How to Assess Requests for Change, Support, or Accommodation
- How to Document Self-Advocacy Evidence and Limits
Sources
- Council of Autism Service Providers, ABA Practice Guidelines Version 3.0 public summary
- Behavior Analyst Certification Board, Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts
- Behavior Analyst Certification Board, BCBA Test Content Outline, 6th edition
- American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Augmentative and Alternative Communication
- Mifsud and colleagues, Systematic Review of AAC for Autistic Adults and Children
- The Role of Self-Advocacy and Self-Determination in Positive Adjustment for Autistic Adolescents and Young Adults
- U.S. Department of Justice, ADA Requirements: Effective Communication
- U.S. Department of Justice, Americans with Disabilities Act Title III Regulations
- Breaux and Smith, Assent in Applied Behaviour Analysis and Positive Behaviour Support
- National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, Challenging Behaviour and Learning Disabilities, NG11 Recommendations
- Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Find Support in a Crisis