Lucia Tullio; a tribute

Thank you to Lois Cameron and Nikky Steiner for this tribute to their friend and co-author.

We are extremely sad to hear about the death of Lucia Tullio and extend our deepest condolences to her family.

Lucia became involved in Talking Mats during the pandemic when the Central London community health trust gave a small grant to develop a resource to explore identity, diversity and equality in AAC practice. Lucia who, used  AAC, became a core and active member of the group. The group met regularly on zoom and spent considerable time unpicking the components of our lives that contribute to our identity. After those components had been identified the group spent time thinking about how these could be represented in symbol form. This was not an easy topic but Lucia loved the challenge. Articulating her thoughts and ideas through her AAC often took a long time but the wait was always worth it as the Lucia’s contributions were helpful and wise.

Lucia stayed on working on the second part of the project which was to create a resource that clinicians could use as a reflective tool. It was a privilege to work with Lucia and  it was wonderful to be able to present with her in person at the Communication Matters conference in 2023. One of the things that Lucia was passionate about was challenging the assumptions that people made about the intelligence of people who used AAC. Her thoughtful and perceptive contribution to developing the Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Talking Mats springboard challenges the assumptions  that people might make and is a legacy and tribute to her.

The resource and the video to demonstrate its use are available here for anyone to download.

The article, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: A Resource to Support the Exploration of Identity within Practice by Lois, Nikky and Lucia can be found in Communication Matters (2023), Volume 38 number 2