Tactile symbols

Also called Tangible symbols, Textured symbols, Touch symbols, Tactile cues

Symbols you can feel: textures, shapes and part-objects on cards, for people who cannot see a picture symbol or hear a spoken word.

What it is

A tactile symbol is a symbol read by touch. Instead of a drawing, the card carries a texture, a shape or a piece of a real object: a square of towelling for bath, a spoon for dinner, a scrap of seatbelt for the bus, a coin for the shop. The person feels the card and knows what is coming, or picks the card to ask for it.

It is the tactile branch of the same idea as objects of reference, and the two overlap: an object of reference is a whole object that stands for an activity, and a tactile symbol is that idea shrunk onto a card, made portable and put in a row. Tactile symbols are one step more abstract than the object itself and one step less abstract than a raised picture, and a person can move along that line at their own pace.

They are hand-made, almost always, because they have to be made from the person's own life. There is no shop-bought set that means anything to a particular person until it has been used with them.

Who it can help

People with a visual impairment who also have a learning disability or a profound and multiple learning disability, for whom neither print, Braille nor picture symbols are accessible. People who are deafblind, especially children, where a card that can be felt is the start of a shared vocabulary. And some autistic children and children with cerebral palsy who see well enough but attend better to something they can hold.

The people it serves are often those with the fewest communication options, which is why the work is careful and slow, and why a well-made tactile timetable is a bigger achievement than it looks.

It is not needed by a person who can see pictures, for whom ordinary symbols are faster and richer, and it is not Braille or Moon, which are for people who can read.

How it works

Each symbol is a card, usually stiff and uniform in size so the person knows where the edges are, with the texture or object fixed firmly to the front and the printed word and a picture on it for sighted partners. The symbol is presented before the activity every time, with the same words, the same touch to the hand and the same pause. Over many repetitions the person comes to anticipate the activity from the card, and then to reach for the card to ask for it.

Consistency is the mechanism. The same texture must mean the same thing on the ward, at home and at school, so the set is documented in the person's communication dictionary with a photograph of each card and what it means.

A tactile timetable is a row of cards on a strip, left to right, that the person feels through in order, with a finished box at the end to drop each one into. That is the tactile now and next.

Getting started

Pick the three activities the person most enjoys or most needs warning of. For each, choose a texture or a small object that is part of the activity itself, not a stand-in for it: the real flannel, the real spoon, not a picture of them. Fix it to a card and write the word underneath for everyone else.

Present it every time the activity is about to happen, for a fortnight, in the same way. Then watch for the first sign that the person knows what it means: a smile, a turn, a reach. Add cards one at a time.

Record every card in the person's dictionary so that the next carer makes the same choice. Sense and PMLD Link both publish practical guidance for families and staff.

Where to get help

Sense for deafblind children and adults, and it teaches tactile communication to families. PMLD Link for people with profound and multiple learning disabilities. Deafblind UK for adults. Your speech and language therapist and the local sensory or visual impairment service, reached via referring to speech and language therapy and through the council's sensory team.