HOW MAKATON SYSTEM WORKS

THE Makaton Charity website says Makaton uses symbols, signs and speech to enable people to communicate. It supports communication skills such as attention and listening, comprehension, memory, recall and organisation of language and expression.

With Makaton, signs are used, with speech, in spoken word order. This helps provide extra clues about what someone is saying. Using signs can help people who have no speech or whose speech is unclear. Using symbols can help people who have limited speech and those who cannot, or prefer not to sign. More than 100,000 children and adults use Makaton symbols and signs, either as their main method of communication or as a way to support speech. In addition Makaton is increasingly used by the general public to aid communication.

Makaton was first developed in the 1970s by Margaret Walker, Kathy Johnston and Tony Cornforth, speech and language therapists who worked at the Royal Association for Deaf people. The term “Makaton” was created by combining the first syllables of each of their names.