Supporting Your Multilingual Child with AAC

If your family speaks more than one language at home and your child uses or needs AAC, you have probably run into a frustrating reality: most AAC apps only work in English. Some add Spanish. A handful offer French. But if your family speaks Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, or any number of other languages, your options have been close to zero.

That is not just inconvenient. It is a real barrier to communication, and it affects millions of families worldwide.

The Problem Multilingual Families Face

Here is what happens in practice. A bilingual family -- say a family where the parents speak Arabic at home and the child attends an English-speaking school -- gets an AAC app recommended by their child's speech therapist. They download it. It is English only.

Now the child has a communication tool that works at school but not at home. They can tell their teacher they want water, but they cannot tell their grandmother. The AAC tool becomes associated with one part of their life, and the other part -- the part with their family, their culture, their emotional world -- gets left out.

Some families are even told by well-meaning professionals to "just use English" to avoid confusing their child. This advice, while common, goes against the current research.

What the Research Says About Bilingual AAC

The research on bilingualism and children with autism or developmental disabilities is clear on several points:

Bilingual exposure does not cause additional language delays in children with autism or developmental disabilities. Restricting a child to one language may actually limit their communication opportunities. (Kay-Raining Bird et al., 2005; Petersen et al., 2012; Drysdale et al., 2015)

Here is what we know:

• Bilingualism does not harm children with autism. Multiple studies have found that bilingual children with ASD develop language at comparable rates to monolingual children with ASD. Bilingualism is not a risk factor.
• Restricting language can harm family relationships. When a child can only communicate in a language their grandparents, aunts, or siblings do not speak fluently, it creates an emotional and cultural gap that goes beyond words.
• Children benefit from hearing and using their home language. The home language carries emotional significance. It is the language of comfort, of bedtime, of family jokes and traditions. Cutting it out of AAC means cutting it out of your child's expressive world.
• AAC can support multilingual development. When an AAC tool provides vocabulary in multiple languages, it reinforces both languages simultaneously. A child who taps "water" and hears it in both English and their home language is getting double the language input.
• Strength in one language helps the other. Research consistently shows that building strong skills in a child's home language actually supports their ability to learn a second language. The concepts, vocabulary understanding, and communication confidence a child develops in their first language transfer over. In other words, supporting your home language is not taking time away from English. It is building a foundation that makes English stronger too.

What to Look for in a Multilingual AAC App

If you are searching for an AAC app that supports your family's languages, here is what matters:

Vocabulary in Your Actual Language

This sounds basic, but many apps that claim "multilingual support" only translate the app's interface (menus and buttons) while keeping the vocabulary cards in English. What you need is the actual word cards -- the words your child taps and hears spoken -- in your home language. Every word, not just a subset.

Accurate Pronunciation

Text-to-speech quality varies dramatically across languages. English TTS has had decades of refinement. Arabic, Hindi, or Korean TTS can sound robotic or mispronounce words in ways that confuse rather than help. Test the voice output in your language before committing to an app.

Culturally Relevant Vocabulary

Communication is cultural. A food category that only lists "hamburger" and "pizza" is not useful for a family that eats rice, lentils, or noodles daily. The vocabulary should reflect the real lives of families in that language community -- not just a direct translation of an English word list.

Easy Language Switching

In a bilingual household, you need to move between languages naturally. If switching the app's language requires digging through settings menus, it will not happen during real conversations. Look for apps where language switching is quick and accessible.

How ChirpBot Supports Multilingual Families

We built ChirpBot with multilingual families in mind from day one. It was not an afterthought or a translated version of an English-only app. Every language was built into the vocabulary system from the ground up.

ChirpBot currently supports 12 languages:

Each language includes thousands of picture word cards with vocabulary that covers everyday categories like food, people, places, activities, emotions, and more. The words are not just translated -- they are organized to make sense within each language's context.

This matters because a Spanish-speaking family in Texas, a Turkish-speaking family in Berlin, and a Hindi-speaking family in Toronto all deserve the same quality of AAC support that English-speaking families have had for years.

Practical Tips for Multilingual AAC at Home

Whether you use ChirpBot or another tool, here are some strategies that help multilingual AAC work in practice:

1. Use both languages naturally. Do not force yourself to pick one. If you normally speak Spanish at dinner and English during homework, use the AAC tool the same way. Model words in whichever language fits the moment.
2. Let family members use their strongest language. If grandma speaks Urdu, she should model AAC in Urdu. The child benefits from hearing and seeing the words in whatever language is natural for that person.
3. Focus on high-frequency words first. Words like "want," "more," "help," "yes," "no," "eat," and "go" are universal across languages. Start with these core words in both languages.
4. Do not worry about mixing languages. Code-switching -- mixing languages within a sentence -- is completely normal for bilingual speakers of all ages. Every bilingual adult you know does this. If your child taps "quiero" and then "cookie," or says "mama" followed by an English word on the device, that is bilingual communication in action. It does not mean they are confused. It means they are pulling from both of their languages to express what they need, which is exactly what bilingual brains do. Celebrate it.
5. Advocate for bilingual AAC with your therapy team. If a therapist or teacher recommends English-only AAC, you can share the research cited above. A simple way to start that conversation: "We speak [language] at home, and the research shows that supporting our home language actually helps with English development too. Can we make sure the AAC tool includes our home language so my child can communicate with our whole family?" Most professionals are receptive when they see the evidence. If you need backup, ask your SLP to look at the research by Kay-Raining Bird or Petersen on bilingualism and developmental disabilities.

A Note for Teachers: When Your Student's AAC Is Multilingual

If you are a teacher and one of your students uses an AAC device set to a language you do not speak, that is okay. You do not need to learn the entire language. Here are a few practical things you can do:

• Ask the family to help you learn 5 to 10 key words in their home language, especially high-frequency words the child uses often on their device.
• Keep the AAC device set to English during school hours if that works for the student, but do not insist on removing the home language from the device entirely.
• If the child switches to their home language during the day, treat it as valid communication, not a problem to correct. Acknowledge the communication and respond.
• Coordinate with the family on which vocabulary words are being targeted, so you can reinforce the same concepts at school (even if you are using the English version of those words).

You Should Not Have to Choose

No family should be forced to choose between giving their child a communication tool and preserving their family's language and culture. For too long, the AAC market has treated multilingual support as a niche feature instead of what it actually is -- a fundamental need for a huge portion of the world's families.

If you have been searching for an AAC solution that works in your language, know that you are not alone, and that options are growing. The days when AAC meant English-only are coming to an end.