Free low-tech AAC for adults

We can find many online resources for free low-tech AAC materials for adults. There are a wide variety of pre-made communication boards in English and many other languages. In addition, we can use free online tools to make our own AAC materials.

Free DIRECT download: 3×4 Topic Board (patient handout). (Email subscribers get free access to all the resources in the Free Subscription Library.)

Outline:

Pre-made low-tech AAC materials

Amy’s Speech & Language Therapy, inc

Amy’s Speech & Language Therapy offers a wide variety of low-tech AAC communication boards for adults and children. She also includes instructions on how to use AAC tools. Her boards include:

  • Alphabet board with Yes/No.
  • Hospital stays.
  • Customizable fill-in communication book.
  • Accident and emergency communication board.
  • Many more for children; some may be appropriate for adults.

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Aphasia.com

Aphasia.com offers several pre-made communication boards:

  • Conversation phrases.
  • Daily activities.
  • Pain.
  • ICU communication.
  • COVID-19 in English and Spanish.

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Aphasia wallet cards

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Boston Children’s Hospital

Boston Children’s Hospital offers several great free resources for low-tech AAC communication.

  • A-E-I-O-U Communication Book.
  • Customizable tabbed communication flip book.
  • Training video for partner-assisted scanning.
  • 60+ pages of common messages (last line under Legacy Messages).

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Centre for Cultural Diversity in Aging

The Centre for Cultural Diversity in Aging is situated in Australia. They offer a large set of communication cards in 37 languages.

You can choose to download either four pictures per page or 12 pictures per page.

The communication pictures are organized by theme.

  • Food/drink/meals.
  • Religion and spirituality.
  • Medical and health specialists.
  • Personal care.
  • Clothing.
  • Sleep.
  • Recreation.
  • Feelings/pain.
  • Mobility aids.

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Coronavirus

Check out this excellent six-page topic board on the Coronavirus / COVID-19. You can use this as a topic board, or as visual support for when you educate.

Also, PrAActical AAC posted a great list of resources for children and adults about COVID-19.

And finally, check out the patient-friendly COVID-19 resources in English and some in Spanish.

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Do2Learn

Do2Learn offers several free low-tech AAC communication boards on a variety of topics:

  • Health Care.
  • Self-help.
  • Activities.
  • Home & School.
  • Social.
  • Safety.
  • Calendar.
  • Technology.

You can choose to print 1-inch or 2-inch pictures, with or without labels. You can also download full-page images with labels.

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Eastern Health

Eastern Health offers free communication boards in 69 languages.

You have to input your name, organization, and email address to satisfy their grant requirement. But you don’t have to check the box to receive news and updates.

Once you submit your information, you’re redirected to the page with one or two download options for each language. Most languages offer a choice of four per page or a max of 20 per page.

The images are arranged by topic:

  • Basics.
  • Instructions.
  • Family.
  • Community.
  • Descriptions.
  • Medical terms.
  • Objects.
  • Professions.
  • Religion.
  • Time/Days.
  • Pain scale.
  • Dental.
  • Food.
  • Allergies.
  • Utensils and appliances.
  • Home assist / items / activities / problems.
  • Personal items.
  • Health issues.
  • Holidays and life events.

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Institute on Disabilities at Temple University

The Institute on Disabilities at Temple University has a nice list of low-tech AAC tools. For instance:

  • Community Outing Board.
  • Feel Sick Board.
  • Meal Time Communication Board.
  • Core Board Placemat.
  • Fast Food Choices.

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Patient Provider Communication

Patient Provider Communication is an international collaboration of people working to improve communication in all areas of health care. They offer a wide-variety of free low-tech AAC tools, including:

  • Advance directives and DNR.
  • Alphabet boards.
  • Appointments.
  • Bedside communication tools.
  • Daily care.
  • Dysphagia icons.
  • Emergency Communication.
  • Eye-gaze boards.
  • Facilitation strategies.
  • Health symbols.
  • Medical procedures.
  • Multi-language materials.
  • Yes/No/Can’t answer.

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Speaking of Speech

Speaking of Speech offers free hospital communication boards.

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Widget Health

Widget Health offers free low-tech AAC materials for patients and professionals.

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Make your own AAC materials

ARASAAC

ARASAAC offers a large database of images and videos that you can download for free.

  • English, Spanish, and 17 other languages.
  • Large database of images and videos.
  • Several tools including modify images and make gifs.
  • Create picture boards, schedules, calendars, and BINGO cards.

PrAACtical AAC selected ARASAAC as a featured site of the month.

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ConnectAbility

ConnectAbility is geared to children, but many of the photos and images would be appropriate for adults. You can also upload your own images.

  • 1, 2, 4, 6, 12, or 16 images per page.
  • English, Spanish, French, and Dutch.
  • Search small database of photos and images or upload your own.
  • Print or save to PDF.

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Easy on the i

Easy on the i is part of the Learning Disability Service at Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.

  • Library contains more than 3,500 symbols.
  • Download the symbols to use.

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Open Symbols

Open Symbols is a collection of open-licensed images that you can download for to use in your own materials.

  • More than 50,000 images.
  • ARASAAC.
  • CoughDrop Symbols.
  • IcoMoon.
  • IconArchive.
  • LanguageCraft.
  • Mulberry Symbols.
  • Sclera Symbols.
  • Tawasol.
  • The Noun Project.
  • Twitter Emoji.
  • Make your own basic word art.

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Pics4Learning

Pics4Learning offers collections of photographs that are permissible to use for educational purposes. There are many sets of photos, including:

  • Food.
  • Holidays.
  • Living.
  • Objects.
  • Parts of your body.
  • Signs.
  • Technology.
  • Transportation.
  • Weather.

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Picto4Me

Picto4me is a free web app that works within Google Drive. You can easily make AAC communication pages and share to your client’s mobile device by scanning a QR code.

  • English, French.
  • Can record audio.
  • Supports voice output and scanning.
  • Can choose 1 – 10 columns and 1 – 10 rows.

You should be able to download your boards as a PDF, but I wasn’t able to figure that out.

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Picto-Selector

Picto-Selector is an app to support creating visual schedules, and of course can be used for low-tech AAC boards. It works with Windows and Mac OS.

  • More than 28,000 images or upload your own.
  • English, Spanish, and 6 – 10 other languages.
  • Many editing options.
  • Print or download as PDF or image file.

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SEN Teacher

SEN Teacher caters to special education, but their Quick AAC Photo Card tool is very suitable for adults.

  • 2, 6, 12, 20, or 35 images per page.
  • Choose from 26 fonts and 36 styles (borders/colors).
  • Search online for photos or upload your own images.
  • Mulberry Symbols, Arasaac Symbols, and Tawasol Symbols.
  • Print it out or download as a PDF.

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More places to find free images

We have many options for finding additional free images, besides taking photos or creating our own. I’ve included several sites below, but see the Buffer Marketing Library. and Lyrical Host for more.

Canva

Canva is the platform I use to create the featured image banner for each blog post. The free account includes access to thousands of free photos and icons.

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FreeDigitalPhotos.net

You can download free photographs and images from FreeDigitalPhotos.net. There are many categories, including:

  • Food and drink.
  • Health and beauty.
  • Holidays and events.
  • Metaphors and symbols.
  • Objects.
  • People.
  • Sports and leisure.

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FreeImages.com

FreeImages.com offers over 300,000 free images. You can use images for personal and commercial purposes, but as always, check out the license agreement.

You can search by keyword or browse one of their 26 categories, including:

  • Food & Drink.
  • Holidays & Festivals.
  • People & Families.
  • Sports & Fitness.
  • Transportation.
  • Health & Medical.
  • Outdoor activities.
  • Religion.
  • Signs & Symbols.

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Jopwell Collection

The Jopwell Collection is free to use as long as you visibly attribute “Jopwell”. The collection features students and professionals of Black, Latino/Hispanic, and Native American backgrounds.

The images are organized by topic, including:

  • Career.
  • Diversity.
  • Events.
  • Office.
  • Sports.
  • Students.
  • Technology.
  • Workplace.

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KaboomPics.com

KaboomPics.com is Karolina’s project and offers over 15,000 images for free. She shares her content under her own license, which allows you to use it for personal or commercial purposes.

You can search by category, color, and orientation of image. You can also search by newest, oldest, most downloaded, and least downloaded.

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nappy.co

nappy.co offers free photos of people from diverse backgrounds under the Creative Commons Zero license. The images are free to use however you like without attribution, although of course it’s encouraged to do so. You can browse or search. Images are also grouped by topic:

  • Active.
  • People.
  • Food.
  • Places.
  • Things.
  • Work.

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Pexels

Pexels offers hundreds of thousands of free photos and videos. You can modify photos and use them without attribution (thought it’s appreciated to give credit). There are a few other rules.

  • Search pictures by the dominant color.
  • Browse collections by topic or theme.
  • Search by keyword.

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Pixabay

Pixabay shares over 1.8 million photos, illustrations, vector art, and videos. All of Pixabay’s content is free to use for commercial and non-commercial purposes, although there are some rules.

You can search by image type, color, size, and orientation of image. Pixabay tags its content in 20 categories, including:

  • Computer/Communication.
  • Emotions.
  • Food/Drink.
  • Health/Medical.
  • People.
  • Sports.
  • Transportation/Traffic.

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Unsplash

Unsplash offers over 1.5 million photos for free, unrestricted use under their own license. I’ve found many of the images I use on my website here.

You can search, browse, or look through collections curated by users. They have some interesting collections, including:

  • Festive moments with friends.
  • Happiness.
  • Women are amazing.
  • Sick and tired.
  • Home.

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Women of Color in Tech (WOCinTech)

You can find over 500 images featuring WOCinTech, which are free to use as long as you give attribution. The photos are organized into three albums, or you can browse through the photo stream.

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What are your favorite low-tech AAC resources?

I’m sure that there are many other useful online resources for making low-tech AAC materials. What are your favorite resources?

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Free DIRECT download: 3×4 Topic Board (patient handout). (Email subscribers get free access to all the resources in the Free Subscription Library.)

Featured image is a communication board I made for a patient using SEN Teacher’s Quick AAC Photo Card tool. You can download it above.

Photo of Lisa Young
Website | + posts

Lisa earned her M.A. in Speech-Language Pathology from the University of Maryland, College Park and her M.A. in Linguistics from the University of California, San Diego.

She participated in research studies with the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) and the University of Maryland in the areas of aphasia, Parkinson’s Disease, epilepsy, and fluency disorders.

Lisa has been working as a medical speech-language pathologist since 2008. She has a strong passion for evidence-based assessment and therapy, having earned five ASHA Awards for Professional Participation in Continuing Education.

She launched EatSpeakThink.com in June 2018 to help other clinicians be more successful working in home health, as well as to provide strategies and resources to people living with problems eating, speaking, or thinking.

8 Comments

  1. Walter said:

    Thanks Lisa

    Nice site

  2. Carrie, CF-SLP said:

    I appreciate this resource — it shows all the low-tech AAC choices that are out there for a best fit for a patient (for free!). Thanks for putting it together so thoughtfully.

  3. Sally said:

    Thank you for this great collection!

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