Communication lies at the heart of our ability to learn, form relationships and make friends. Being able to express our wants, needs, feelings and ideas is essential to our well-being and happiness. Most people with autism have poor communication skills, and many never learn to speak. These communication difficulties can lead to intense frustration, feelings of isolation and challenging behaviour. NORSACA is undertaking a practice-based research project that will investigate how voice output communication aids can help children with autism and severe communication difficulties to improve their communication. The communication aid consists of a laptop running specialist vocabulary software. The child is able to choose words and the laptop then “speaks” the words. This is an unusual and innovative research project because it is being led by a charity and by practitioners rather than academics. There has been limited research in this area, despite a high level of interest in the UK, and internationally. Also the research will evaluate the aids as they are used in real classroom contexts. The project is being led by Sutherland House School, NORSACA’s outstanding specialist school for children with autism. We have engaged the Autism Centre at Sheffield Hallam University to work with us and provide academic validation of the research. We expect to submit the final research report for publication in Autumn 2009. The total project cost is £30,000. £18,000 has already been raised towards this.