speech vs. comm. disorders therapist?

Is there a difference between a speech and communicative disorders specialist? I thought they were one in the same. Over the weekend we met my BIL's fiancee's family. Our 3 year old DS is non verbal ASD with some obsessive behaviors. For example, he is really into doors and lights, and repeatedly opened and closed a door in BIL's apartment, when we tried stopping him he started to throw a tantrum. At one point BIL's fiancee's father came up to me and said I should take him to a communicative disorder specialist (I think he was trying to mean well, they have an adult son that has aspergers). I mentioned that he had been evaluated for speech and sees a speech therapist 3x a week, but he said that not all speech therapists are comm. disorder specialists... I wanted to see if anyone knew of this and if there is such a therapy for this? TIA

speech vs. comm. disorders therapist?

I am a speech pathologist and work with kids with autism and have never heard of that. I mean not all SLP's will have experience with Autism per se, but still never heard of that. Maybe it's an old term or something.

Re: speech vs. comm. disorders therapist?

speech vs. comm. disorders therapist?

I agree with the pp. I have never heard of that before. Maybe they were talking about teaching with a device or pec board to help with communication.