October | 2016 | International Symbol Dictionary for AAC

clothing This month we are celebrating International AAC month like many others around the world as can be seen from the ISAAC website

The Tawasol symbols team from Qatar ran a workshop for parents, therapists and people with Autism at the the Second National Autism Forum. The team stressed the importance of using culturally and linguistically appropriate symbols. Demonstrations were given on how to use Tawasol symbols to support communication and build vocabulary in a fun and exciting way through Tawasol game cards. The team provided the audience with free Arabic symbol resources in Arabic and English. The attendees were very excited to see and receive something that they believed represented their culture and religion and appeared very keen to start using the Tawasol resources.

In the photographs below you can see the Tawasol symbols on the attendees tables.

people attending autism forum at tables

Nadine presenting about the symbols

In the picture above Nadine is presenting whilst Dr Amal and Tullah were taking photos at this stage in the day. Everyone was given a pack of cards with Tawasol Symbols in Arabic and English, that can be downloaded from the resources page.

tawasol symbol cards

worksheets

laminated worksheets with symbols

map of countries for Tawasol Symbols downloads

World map where Tawasol Symbols have been downloaded

There have been many debates about localisation and globalisation or internationalisation and the different requirements to support these ideas – W3C have provided definitions that fit the web and in many ways localisation can support concepts used on web pages namely customisation related to:

“Numeric, date and time formats
Use of currency
Keyboard usage
Collation and sorting
Symbols, icons and colors
Text and graphics containing references to objects, actions or ideas which, in a given culture, may be subject to misinterpretation or viewed as insensitive.
Varying legal requirements
and many more things.”

We have acted on many of the W3C ideas over the last two and half years and noticed that while we have been developing our symbols for an audience based mainly in the MIddle East many of those who have requested use of the symbols and downloads have come from as far afield as Sweden, Australia and India. We know some of these symbols have been for refugee groups and camps and others have been for religious symbols. Both these requests have led to an increase in the number of symbols we have produced in these areas and many have been seen on our Facebook pages.

But we are not the only ones making symbols for a wider audience and it is interesting to know that there have been requests that Apple should introduce emojis with women wearing the hijab with a petition gaining over 2,295 signatures seven months ago and headline news from the BBC and many others.

Many refugee organisations have booklets and charts with images to help those who do not speak the language of the country to which they are going. An example is the ICOON project which has many charts for download as PDF files. These images tend to be in monochrome but cover a wide range of topics.