Open symbol sets

Also called Free symbols, Open-licence symbols, Mulberry symbols, Sclera symbols, Global Symbols

Mulberry, Sclera, ARASAAC and the Global Symbols collection: symbol sets anyone can use, print and build into software without a licence fee.

What it is

An open symbol set is one released under a licence that lets anyone use it without paying: print it, put it on a device, build it into an app, translate it. The main ones are ARASAAC from Spain, the Mulberry symbols, a clean, coloured set drawn in the UK and released under a licence that allows commercial use as well, and Sclera, a bold white-on-black set from Belgium designed for people with a visual impairment. There are more, and Global Symbols, a UK-based project, gathers them into one searchable collection with a free board-building tool.

The contrast is with PCS, Widgit and SymbolStix, which are excellent and cost money. Open sets are not the cheap version of those; some are the equal of any commercial set for the everyday vocabulary, and their openness is a design property. A person's vocabulary should not vanish when a licence lapses, and a symbol for a word should not depend on which company's device the funding panel chose.

The free Talk board follows the same principle: no licence, no account, and the person keeps it.

Who it can help

Anyone who needs symbols without a budget, which is most families at the start. Small charities, community groups, faith organisations and clubs that want a symbol menu or timetable. Schools in countries without an AAC industry. Developers of free software. And, more quietly, every person who has ever been told that their symbols could not follow them from school to college because the college did not hold the licence.

The Open AAC movement makes the wider argument: that a person's communication should belong to them, and that the vocabulary, the symbols and the data should be portable between devices.

Open sets are not automatically the right choice for a person who has spent years learning a commercial set, and continuity should win; and a symbol-supported document for a service that already holds a Widgit licence can reasonably stay in Widgit.

How it works

Each set carries a licence. Mulberry is Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike, which allows commercial use; ARASAAC is Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike, which does not; Sclera is Attribution-NonCommercial. All of them require credit. Global Symbols records the licence of every symbol so a user can see what is allowed.

The Global Symbols site lets you search across sets, download individual symbols, and use Board Builder to lay out and print boards or export them to some AAC apps. Open AAC has published a standard board format so that a board made in one program can be opened in another, and several free apps support it.

Quality varies by set and by topic. The everyday core is strong across all of them; specialist medical or technical vocabulary is patchier, and ARASAAC is usually the deepest.

Getting started

Search Global Symbols for the person's first twenty words, compare how Mulberry, ARASAAC and Sclera draw them, and pick the one the person looks at longest. Print a core board from Board Builder this week.

Put the credit line on the back of the board and keep a note of which set you used, because the next board should match.

If the person also uses the Talk board, the printed board and the device board can share a set, so the picture on the fridge and the one on the screen say the same thing. That consistency is worth more than any single set's style.

Where to get help

Global Symbols for the collection and Board Builder. Open AAC for the wider open movement and the board standard. ARASAAC for the largest single open set. For guidance on whether an open set suits a particular person, Communication Matters, the ACE Centre and CALL Scotland, which has long championed free resources.