You might hear about total communication (TC) which is a combination of many approaches including the approaches listed above. Total Communication can use a variety of methods flexibly – sign, speech and hearing, fingerspelling, gesture, facial expression and lipreading – in whatever combination works best for the deaf child. It is based on the principle that deaf children can learn to communicate effectively by using any and all means that they can. However, total communication may not provide the CONSISTENT access to language that is necessary for language development. The basis of total communication is to provide communication in any format which may result in significant gaps as communication modality or communication partner changes.
