As we start the new year and wish you all the best for 2018, the team behind the research and development of the Arabic Symbol Dictionary have updated their website and renamed it globalsymbols.com.

We want to continue to support communities to develop and host new symbol sets for a range of languages supporting communication and literacy for those with special needs and we hope you will join us on this journey.

Mada, the Qatar Assistive Technology Center will be maintaining Tawasol symbols (keeping the original name on their servers).  However, the original Arabic symbol dictionary remains on our secure server with your data and passwords allowing you to have access to all the freely available resources and those we develop in the future alongside links to other similarly licensed materials namely Creative Commons Share Alike Licence (cc-by-40).

This blog will continue to be our way of sharing the research aspect of the international symbol dictionary development, as we explore new ideas.

Watch this space as we start to work with colleagues in Pakistan thanks to a travel grant from the Global Challenges Research Fund

Payment for the flights and accommodation will allow a member of the team to visit Lahore and Islamabad.  It is hoped that we can find ways of applying for funding to adapt and add to the symbol dictionary to reflect local linguistic concepts and culture with AAC users, families, carers and experts in the region using the online voting systems to develop resources that suit local requirements.  It will also be great to have  feedback through Facebook as we have  done in the past.