Newsroom
Advocacy, ideas, updates and voices from the Spelling Alliance of Ireland.
This is where you can follow our advocacy and policy work, our campaigns, community developments, events and organisational news, along with public statements and media coverage as they are published.
The Spelling Alliance of Ireland contributed to the review of the Disability Access Route to Education (DARE), bringing forward the experiences and priorities of nonspeaking and unreliably speaking students and highlighting barriers to communication access, assessment and participation in further and higher education.
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The Spelling Alliance of Ireland contributed to the review of the Disability Access Route to Education (DARE), bringing forward the experiences and priorities of nonspeaking and unreliably speaking students and highlighting barriers to communication access, assessment and participation in further and higher education.
Read moreSubmissions & consultations
We work to ensure that the experiences and priorities of nonspeaking people are represented where decisions are being made.
The Alliance engages with consultations, reviews and policy processes affecting nonspeaking and unreliably speaking people, particularly in communication access, education, disability services, healthcare and participation in public life.
Submissions, consultation responses and position statements are published here as they are made, with documents available to download where relevant.
The Spelling Alliance of Ireland contributed to the review of the Disability Access Route to Education (DARE), bringing forward the experiences and priorities of nonspeaking and unreliably speaking students and highlighting barriers to communication access, assessment and participation in further and higher education.
Led by spellers
The people most affected by policy and practice should be heard in the conversations shaping them.
This section carries writing, commentary, interviews, campaign contributions and consultation input from spellers themselves — analysis of the issues, not stories about overcoming them. Nothing is published here until spellers have written or approved it.
No speller-authored pieces have been published yet.
When they are, each piece will appear here and in the archive above under Speller Voices, credited to its author.
For journalists and researchers
The Alliance welcomes responsible media engagement on nonspeaking and unreliably speaking people, communication access, the presumption of competence and our advocacy work. We can help with background, context and, where spellers choose to take part, direct contributions.
Please include your outlet and deadline when you get in touch.
As they are produced, the following will be published in this section:
Short guidance for journalists, producers and content creators working on stories that involve nonspeaking and unreliably speaking people.
Assume a full inner life, opinions and understanding, as you would with any other contributor.
Speech ability should not be used as a proxy for intelligence, comprehension or capacity.
Describe adults as adults and teenagers as teenagers. Avoid infantilising terms, tone or framing.
A communication system or partner does not give someone a voice. The person already has one; communication access gives them a way to express it.
Wherever possible, involve nonspeaking people themselves in stories and discussions that concern them, and allow the time their communication method needs.
Communicating and participating are ordinary human activities, not extraordinary achievements.
Follow Alliance news, advocacy, campaigns and opportunities to take part on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, or get in touch with us directly.
