Historically, knowledge production and clinical service delivery within Speech and Language Therapy (SLT) have been carried out based on positivist and bio-medical paradigms. Whilst liberal discourses on clinical service delivery within these paradigms have focused on providing equitable care towards multilingual, multicultural or ‘culturally and linguistically diverse’ populations, it has not examined the impact of colonialism and over medicalisation in SLT service delivery. This presentation will critically examine the colonial and Euro-centric conceptualisation of language and ‘communication disorders’ that have come to dominate majority of SLT profession’s history. These ideologies present critical challenges in delivering person and justice centred care, for example, for neurodivergent, racially minoritised, gender-diverse individuals or those who are at the intersections of these multiple marginalising identities. What does it mean for a profession focusing on ‘communication access to all’ to be confronted with these challenges? This presentation will provide answers to this question through highlighting a growing body of research rooted in critical and decolonial approaches. It will invite the profession of SLT to move beyond multiculturalism, cultural competence, and cultural and linguistic diversity and to engage in research and praxis rooted in critical, anti-colonial, and Indigenous knowledge systems. Creating space for this scholarship is critical for SLT as these approaches resist medicalisation and promote an understanding of communication disability rooted in non-hierarchy, relationality, embodiment, and collective care. Praxis based on criticality and decoloniality resits reducing disabled individuals to mere numbers and have the capacity to create transformative and innovative care. It compels us to move away from harmful research and clinical practices that deepens the marginalisation of the already marginalised. A ‘critical and decolonial vision’ for SLT emerges within this context, enabling genuine listening, reflection and co-creation of therapeutic approaches commensurate with disability and linguistic justice.

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