Baby sign language and AAC

Parents often ask which to choose. It's the wrong question. Signs and a speaking device solve different problems, and most children benefit from having both available.

Signs are AAC too

People tend to think of AAC as devices, but hand signs are squarely part of it. In the field's own terms, signs are unaided AAC: communication using only the body, no equipment. Picture cards and speaking apps are aided AAC, because they involve something external.

Same family, different strengths.

What each one is good at

Signs go everywhere

No battery, nothing to carry, nothing to forget in the car. In the bath, in the pool, in the middle of a supermarket meltdown, your child's hands are available. That reliability is the whole advantage, and it's a large one.

The limit is the audience. A sign only communicates to someone who knows it. Grandparents, a new nursery worker, a stranger in a playground: none of them will understand.

A device speaks to anyone

Spoken output means a child can be understood by a person who has never met them and knows nothing about their communication. That independence matters more as a child's world gets bigger.

The limit is physical. The device has to be present, charged, and within reach. It won't be, sometimes.

How they work together

The pairing is complementary in an obvious way once you see it: signs cover the moments the device isn't there, and the device covers the people who don't know signs.

There's also a learning argument. A sign is a physical action a child performs with their own body, which makes it a different kind of memory from selecting a picture. For some children, seeing the sign and the picture and hearing the word together helps the connection form. That's part of why BublTalk plays a real hand sign inside the card rather than treating signs as a separate thing.

Which signs to start with

The same principle as any AAC vocabulary: few, and useful many times a day.

• more — the workhorse, applies to food, play, tickles, everything
• all done / finished — ends a meal, a bath, an activity
• eat and drink — several times a day, every day
• help — replaces a great deal of frustration
• stop — worth teaching early and honouring instantly

Most families in the US draw these from American Sign Language, so the signs a child learns are real signs other people may recognise, rather than invented gestures.

A note on what "baby sign" means here

Baby sign in the mainstream sense is usually marketed to hearing parents of typically developing babies as an early-communication bridge. Using signs with a non-speaking child is related but not the same thing: it's AAC, and it's usually part of a plan involving a speech-language pathologist.

It's also worth saying plainly that learning a handful of signs is not learning ASL, and shouldn't be described as such. ASL is a full language with its own grammar and a Deaf community it belongs to. Borrowing signs for a child's communication is fine and common. Claiming fluency isn't.

Common questions

Is baby sign language a form of AAC?

Yes. Signs are unaided AAC, meaning communication that uses only the body with no external equipment. They sit in the same family as picture cards and speech-generating apps, which are aided AAC.

Should we use signs or an AAC app?

Most families end up using both, because they solve different problems. Signs are always available and need no device, but only people who know them can understand. An app speaks aloud so anyone can understand, but has to be present and charged.

Will signing stop my child from talking?

Research on AAC, which includes manual signs, has not found that it reduces speech. In one widely cited review of the strongest available evidence, none of the cases showed a decrease in speech production and most showed gains.