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Tangible Symbol Cards

At Adaptive Design we provide the Standardized Tactile Augmentative Communication Symbols Kit for American Printing House. We also customize cards on a case-by-case basis.
 
Get inspired by our past symbol cards or create your own request to fit your needs. 

Project Gallery
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Wall Board

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Single Holder

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Cue Display

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Calendar Holder

The order form includes dozens of commonly requested symbol cards and a full range of holders, displays, and choice boards. 

Build on Stories: Storytime Card Sets
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Parents and teachers everywhere use visual aids to enhance story-time and to encourage children to engage with the story.  For children with low vision or blindness, tactile aids serve the same function.

​For the story Wheels on the Bus, a series of seven Tangible Symbol Cues have been designed and fabricated to represent items or scenes in the book.  A tiny bottle, for example, represents "The baby on the bus..."

The set of cues comes in a customized storage container -- shaped like a bus.  One side of the bus has strips of loop fabric to which three cues at a time can adhere. The storybook itself has its own pocket in the front.

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Wheels on the Bus

Other Favorites
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I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly

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If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

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The Going to Bed Book

Storybook sets are made to order. Please email info@adaptivedesign.org if you are interested in collaborating to create a custom storybook set for your child or classroom. 

A young student in a wheelchair with an attached plexiglass tray is laughing as an adult shows him a rubber duck embedded in a 4” x 6” white card.  The adult, a man with glasses and a beard, is holding a spray bottle pointed toward the boy and is smiling.  The background shows classroom shelves.
The WATER PLAY tangible communication symbol:  A small, yellow, duck squeeze toy is partly embedded in a white 4" x 6" card, wth the legend "WATER PLAY" underneath.

Water Play

A student is looking down at a 4x6” white card. His arms are resting on a blue cushion. The boy holds the card with his right hand, touching the red and yellow Ritz crackers wrapper embedded in it. His teacher, across the table from him, holds one corner of the Ritz crackers card with her right hand, while showing another card with her left.   That one has two small ceramic tiles embedded in it.
Objects are partly embedded in 4" by 6" white cards.  On the left, a rectangularsection of mylar wrap, like that lining bags of snacks, with the legend "SNACK" beneath.  On the right, two square, white ceramic tiles surrounded by a heavy black border, with the legend "BATHROOM" underneath.

Snack and Bathroom

A young student wearing a long-sleeved purple top reaches toward two cards held in front of her by an adult’s arm.  One is a 4” x 6” white card with a yellow tennis ball embedded in it.  The other card, barely 2” square, is right above it.  She is  touching the smaller card with one finger. Her other hand is tucked completely inside her sleeve.
A fluorescent green tennis ball is partly embedded in a 4" x 6" white card, with the legend "GYM" underneath.

Gym

A boy about 6 years old is facing mostly away from the camera, looking at 6 white cards, 4 x 6 inches each, arranged in 2 rows.  Each card has a 3-dimensional object partly embedded in it.  The boy is touching the card with the small yogurt cup, beneath which is a  label: “yogurt.”  The other cards are “juice” (juice box),  “drink” (plastic cup),  “cereal” (cereal pieces encased in plastic),  “muffin” and “food.” (The last two objects are obscured.)
Two objects are partly embedded in white 4" x 6" cards.  On the left, a colorful, single serving juice box, with the legend "JUICE" underneath, and on the right, a 6-ounce plastic yogurt cup with the legend "YOGURT" beneath.

Food and Beverage

Project Gallery Cues
Build on Stories
Standardized Tactile Augmentative Communication Symbols Kit by American Printing House
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Other Resources
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Coming Soon
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Tactile symbol systems are valuable tools that aid learners with conversations about people, places, events, and ideas. STACS: Standardized Tactile Augmentative Communication Symbols Kit helps learning partners (teachers, parents, peers, etc.) teach a beginning standardized vocabulary. Teachers then introduce additional individualized symbols as needed. 

Tangible symbols are appropriate for use as a receptive form of communication with any learner who is deafblind and as an expressive form of communication for learners who have a predictable motor, behavioral, or communicative response that the communication partner can interpret.

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