Letter-writing to someone with learning difficulties - image font?
July 25, 2016 3:31 AM   Subscribe

I have seen text written for differently-abled kids with a very low level of reading ability, where each word had a symbol over it. For example, "good" might have a thumbs-up or a smiley face over it; "see" might have an eye with an arrow, or something. I've searched but google is failing me. Does anyone know of any online facility to generate text like this?

Reason being, I want to write a letter to a friend - I know that his carer will read it to him, but I'd love there to be bits of it that he can read or understand himself.
posted by greenish to Writing & Language (8 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Are you thinking of using emojis? Google what you want ie emoji and then add the word you want?

Also... the phrase you might find helpful is "low literacy" although using pictures is more no literacy than low literacy.
posted by taff at 3:37 AM on July 25, 2016


I think the term you're looking for is rebus.
posted by (Over) Thinking at 4:49 AM on July 25, 2016


Its not really a rebus - I know what the OP is talking about, we have some Dora the Explorer children's books that are set up this way, with small images directly over the text to help a child understand the word that is written there (in the Dora books they do it help the child understand the Spanish words, so the sentence might be "Dora saw un gato" with a picture of a cat over "un gato".)

I doubt there is anything online that would help you generate this. Honestly I think your best bet is to just write the letter in word (or similar) and then insert suitable images above the text.
posted by anastasiav at 5:23 AM on July 25, 2016


Response by poster: Yes anastasiav, that's exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about! And yes, I think I will probably have to do it manually. But I thought I'd ask here first because Rule #5932 of the internet is the more time you're about to spend doing something, the higher the chance some kid half your age has already made a website that does it for you.
posted by greenish at 6:01 AM on July 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


Best answer: I think the search term you want is Alternative and Augmentative Communication (AAC). There's a website for creating documents with Widgit Literacy Symbols which has a 21-day free trial, and paid subscription afterwards. Otherwise as the software for Widgit, Makaton etc is understandably expensive, try your library which ought to have one of the packages.
posted by boudicca at 7:04 AM on July 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


Response by poster: YES boudicca that is the EXACT thing I was after! All hail the power of AskMeFi :D
posted by greenish at 8:42 AM on July 25, 2016


In the UK this is known as Easy Read, and it's not just about the pictures, but the font, word choice, and writing style. That term might help you with finding resources.
posted by Helga-woo at 3:48 PM on July 25, 2016


Boardmaker is the most widely used software for what you are talking about. I believe Boardmaker Online has 30 day free trials.
posted by scrubbles at 10:11 PM on July 25, 2016


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