The inspiration for the development of the Simplified Sign System occurred some years ago, in the late 1980s. A former student and I had recently completed a research project that examined various factors associated with non-speaking children’s success in learning signs to communicate (Bonvillian & Blackburn, 1991). Most of the participants in that study were students diagnosed with autism at the Grafton School in Virginia. Because these students had failed to make significant progress in lea...