Print a Board That Works

A board only works if it is there when the moment needs it. Devices sleep, stay in the other room, get left in the bag — paper does not. Every AAC AAC. Augmentative and alternative communication: any way of communicating that supplements or replaces speech — boards, pictures, text, devices. For people whose speech is unreliable sometimes or always. board in this family prints: one button turns what you built into a poster, and the steps below turn the poster into a thing that survives a kitchen. None of it is craft for its own sake. The paper board exists so the communication does not depend on anything with a battery.

What you need

• A printer and ordinary paper. Card stock is nicer; ordinary paper works the same.
• A way to make it survive hands: a laminator, or a plastic sleeve you can swap the sheet out of.
• A hole punch and something to hang it from — a lanyard, a keyring, a loop of string.

Steps

1. Build the board with the person who uses it, on screen, before printing. Photos of the real cup and the real snack shelf — the known tiles are the ones worth printing.
2. Print what each place needs. My Board prints the category you are looking at — needs by the snack table, core words at the desk, one poster per place.
3. Print the choices you actually offer. My Choices prints the current tiles as a first-then poster — the fridge-door version of a real choice.
4. Print the phrases for the hours the device is elsewhere. Ask & Wonder prints the mode you are on as a phrase sheet, so I need a break works from a bag.
5. Laminate it, or sleeve it. Lamination is permanent and a sleeve lets you swap the sheet when the words change — pick by how often they change.
6. Punch a hole and add a lanyard for the boards that travel. A board on a string goes where the person goes; a board in a drawer is no board at all.
7. Hang it where the routine happens. Fridge door, classroom door, shoe shelf — the Visual Schedule prints a whole routine as one poster for exactly those places.
8. Reprint when life changes. New snack, new term, new words that matter — the poster is a snapshot, and the reprint is free.

If it goes wrong

If the poster stops being used, the answer is usually placement or honesty, not the paper. A board nobody models is decoration; a board whose answers get vetoed is a test; a board hung where the routine isn't is furniture. Move it, reprint it, ask the person — and when the device is in reach, the speaking version is the real one; the paper is its backup. Paper never runs out of battery; it also never speaks. Both are the design.

Where to go next

• My Board — the tap-to-speak board — its print button makes a poster per category.
• My Choices — the first-then choice path — its print button makes the fridge-door version.
• Ask & Wonder — phrase board and gentle facts — prints the current mode as a phrase sheet.
• Visual Schedule & Routine Builder — the routine builder — its print button set the pattern the boards followed.

What this rests on: Visual supports — 65 studies: a concrete cue that stays where you put it. The speaking boards below carry their own line — augmentative and alternative communication, 44 studies.