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Visual supports can help to:

provide structure and routine

encourage independence

build confidence

improve understanding

avoid frustration and anxiety

provide opportunities to interact with others.

They can make communication physical and consistent, rather than fleeting and inconsistent like spoken words can be.

Types of visual support

A wide range of items can be used as visual supports. For example:

These can be real objects, printed images, or on a smartphone, tablet or computer.

Uses of visual supports

Visual supports can be used in a range of ways, for example:

as a single message, eg the person takes a yellow card from their pocket when they need to go to the toilet, or a puts purple card on the board when they're feeling stressed

in combination to create a daily timetable, schedule, sequence or reward chart

to make a choice, eg the person can put the trampolining symbol in the 'afternoon' area of the board

to illustrate a social story or comic strip conversation.

Examples of visual supports

Make visual supports  portable, durable, easy to find, personalised and consistent.

Portable

Make the visual supports portable by:

using a visual supports app on the person's tablet

storing photos and pictures on the person's smartphone

putting symbols, pictures and schedules in a folder for the person to carry with them.

Durable

Laminate printed visual supports

Back up any app, photos and pictures you use on a smartphone, tablet or computer.

Easy to find

Ensure that visual supports are easy to find, for example by:

placing them in prominent places at eye level

putting them on an actual object

putting a single symbol in the person's pocket

distributing them throughout particular environments, eg objects and areas in the classroom and at home could be labelled

putting a shortcut to them from a tablet home screen

attaching symbols to boards so that people know where to go to look at them - you could also use Velcro strips to attach symbols to a board, meaning schedules can be easily altered, eg activities removed once completed.

Personalised

Visual supports are very personal and what works for one person may not work for another. Use the person's special interest, eg make a visual timetable in the shape of a rocket.

Remember that some autistic people have difficulties generalising, eg they may not realise that a Hula Hoop packet symbolises all crisps.

It can sometimes be helpful to use more than one type of visual support, but always introduce visual supports gradually. Start with one symbol and then build up a collection.

Consistent

If using pictures, once you choose a type or style (for example, line drawings), use it consistently. Ask family members, friends, teachers or support workers to use the same visual supports consistently.

Useful resources

There are lots of pictures you can download or buy as printed images and apps that you can use. Some examples are listed below. Inclusion does not mean that the National Autistic Society has endorsed them. You can search our Autism Services Directory or ask the community for suggestions of others.

You should always check the terms and conditions relating to the use of images that you download and any costs involved.

More information

Gerhardt, P, Cohen, M. (2014) Visual supports for people with autism: a guide for parents and professionals. Woodbine House

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Visual supports can help to: provide structure and routine encourage independence build confidence improve understanding avoid frustration and anxiety provide opportunities to interact with others. They can make communication physical and consistent, rather than fleeting and inconsistent like spoken words can be. A wide range of items can be used as visual supports.

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Tactile 3D printing for people who are blind or visually impaired 

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Tactile 3D printing for people who are blind or visually impaired 

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Art is a universal medium of expression, bridging gaps across language, time and culture.

But galleries and museums aren't always accessible to everyone, often excluding blind people and those with low vision from truly experiencing the art world. With about 285 million blind or visually impaired people in the world, that's a sizable part of the global population being left out.

But innovations - both simple and high-tech - are making the art world even more inclusive.

Many blind people and those with low vision have experienced art through audio descriptions of pieces, whether it's recorded commentary from museums or explanations from friends in real time. But this can prevent them from interpreting pieces of art for themselves.

Luckily advocates have developed new solutions, creating tactile ways for art lovers to substitute touch for sight.

Here are just a few ways art is becoming more accessible for blind and low-vision communities around the world.

1. 3D printing of fine art

3D printing is making art more accessible by creating touchable versions of art - especially famous pieces. Blind people and those with low vision, some of whom have never viewed works like the Mona Lisa or The Scream, can now feel their way through these iconic works.

One company at the forefront is 3D Photoworks, which makes tactile versions of historic paintings and modern photography through 3D printing. The pieces made by 3D Photoworks also feature sensors, which activate audio descriptions of the work as a person feels around the piece.

3D Printworks has brought its inclusive art to museums around the country, but it wants to eventually provide accessible options for art lovers who can't see in all 35,000 museums across North America.

2. Incorporating Braille into visual art

Including Braille in traditional forms of art is one way to make pieces more accessible, while also celebrating Blind culture. And one particular artist has paved the way for this innovative technique.

New York-based artist Roy Nachum creates what he calls "visual art for the visually impaired." His work is undeniably gorgeous at first glance, even serving as the cover art for Rihanna's album, Anti. But for those who can't see Nachum's eye-catching visuals, the art has a different layer of artistic appeal - poetic writings embossed on the artwork's surface in Braille.

To highlight the tactile importance of his work, Nachum also lightly covers his art in ash, which leaves fingerprint marks on the work as a person reads the Braille messages. The prints left behind act as a type of documentation of human contact with his work.

Nachum's innovative form of interactive art allows everyone to experience the same art in different - yet equally powerful - ways.

3. Extra-textured paintings for inclusivity

Making art more accessible to people who can't see doesn't require changing already existing pieces. Paintings, for example, can be created with this audience in mind from the start, layering paint to make it a more tactile experience.

One well-known artist using this technique is John Bramblitt, who began painting after he lost his eyesight due to complications with epilepsy and Lyme disease in 2001. Bramblitt says losing his sight helped change the way he thought about art and color for the better. He often creates his pieces with thick layers of paint, appealing to touch as well as the gaze of fans who can see.

Though layering paint to create more textured work is common, artists who use the technique specifically to make their art more inclusive are relatively rare. Regardless of the lack of popularity, painting with texture is a simple, low-tech way to bring art to those who can't experience it through sight.

4. Tactile art that welcomes touch

Image: Andrew Myers/Cantor Fine art

We're used to hearing the phrase, "Please, don't touch the art." But California-based contemporary artist Andrew Myers creates works specifically to challenge this common, disapproving phrase.

Using screws of different heights, the artist creates topographic-like portraits by inserting the screws into wooden boards, making images with the meticulous gaps and grooves. As a result, his work has mass appeal for blind people and those with low vision, who can touch his portraits.

Tactile art like Myers' - which includes any art meant to be felt in order to be fully experienced - is engaging for art lovers of all visual ability. From complex pottery to plastic protruding from canvas, tactile forms of art grant a fuller experience to gallery-goers who can't see.

Myers documented his work with tactile art in the documentary Please Touch the Art!, which features a blind man feeling a portrait of himself for the first time.

5. Tactile tours of museums and galleries

Image: William Fernando Martinez/AP

Some major museums and smaller galleries are throwing the "look, but don't touch" mantra out the window - and it's all in the name of inclusivity.

To do this, museums have begun using touch - and even smell - to give those without vision the ability to experience art. Several museums and galleries have started hosting tactile tours, which serve as ways for blind people and people with low vision to touch replicas of famous artworks.

The Louvre in Paris, and the Guggenheim and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, have all established tactile tours, where people can touch pieces of art or casts of famous works. The goal of these tours, one gallery curator at the Guggenheim told The Atlantic, is to allow people who are blind or have low vision to "see" with their brains, not their eyes.

You can find a list of popular museums in the U.S. offering accessible programs for blind people and those with low vision here.

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5 innovative ways art is becoming more accessible to the blind community

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Art is a universal medium of expression, bridging gaps across language, time and culture. But galleries and museums aren't always accessible to everyone, often excluding blind people and those with low vision from truly experiencing the art world. With about 285 million blind or visually impaired people in the world, that's a sizable part of the global population being left out.

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Can visuals be used to analyse psychology?

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Colour

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Koestler Awards (prison art 2017). Images breaking down barriers/ walls.

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Amnesty campaign

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isit the caves of Pech Merle, Font-de-Gaume and Rouffignac in southern France and you will witness some of the most breathtaking art our planet has to offer. Images of bisons, lions and other creatures loom from the cavern walls. Herds of horses and the occasional rhino, not to mention the odd mammoth and giant bull, parade across the rocks. Many animals are depicted in vivid colours, with a sense of perspective and anatomical detail that suggest these artists had acquired considerable skill.

These underground galleries, found mostly in France and Spain, also turn out to be remarkably old. The works at Rouffignac have been dated to around 13,000 years old, while those at nearby Chauvet and Lascaux are thought to be more than 30,000 years old. This testimony on rock walls - in daubs of ochre and charcoal mixed with spittle and fat - shows that our hunter-gatherer ancestors could depict the world around them in a startlingly sophisticated way. As the art critic John Berger once said of these painters, they appear to have had "grace from the start". Picasso was even more awestruck. "We have invented nothing," he remarked gloomily, after a visit to Lascaux in 1940 to inspect the handiwork of his Stone Age predecessors.

Not surprisingly, these paintings attract tens of thousands of visitors every year. However, there is another aspect to this art that often escapes attention, but which is now providing scientists with fresh insights into our recent evolution. Instead of studying those magnificent galloping horses and bisons, researchers are investigating the symbols painted beside them.

These signs are rarely mentioned in most studies of ancient cave art. Some are gathered in groups, some appear in ones or twos, while others are mixed in with the caves' images of animals. There are triangles, squares, full circles, semicircles, open angles, crosses and groups of dots. Others are more complex: drawings of hands with distorted fingers (known as negative hands); rows of parallel lines (called finger flutings); diagrams of branch-like symbols known as penniforms, or little sketches of hut-like entities called tectiforms. In total, 26 specific signs are used repeatedly in these caves, created in the millennia when Europe descended into - and emerged from - the last great Ice Age.

"These symbols are all over these cave walls, but no one really notices them," says Genevieve von Petzinger, of the University of Victoria, in British Columbia. "For example, in Werner Herzog's recent documentary about Chauvet, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, he concentrates totally on the paintings of the horses and rhinos and lets his camera sweep past the symbols as if they simply are not there."

That is a mistake, according to von Petzinger. For the symbols provide clear evidence of the way our ancestors moved from representing ideas realistically - as in those beautiful images of bisons and mammoths - to the stage where they began to represent concepts symbolically. In some cases, signs appear to emerge from the use of truncated images of an animal and eventually come to act as a symbol for that animal in its entirety. For example, a wavy line used to depict the back of a horse in a larger painting eventually comes to stand for the entire horse in different sets of paintings.

But there is more to von Petzinger's work than the study of the appearance of the symbols. Working with her colleague April Nowell, she has created a database of all the signs found in more than 200 caves and other shelters in France and Spain. The aim was to study where and when they were first used, and in what combinations, and to compare them with markings found on other ancient artefacts. The results are startling, for the database shows many symbols are frequently arranged in specific clusters repeated over and over again in different caves (a negative hand with finger fluting, for example).

"What we found was quite remarkable," says von Petzinger. "There is definite patterning in the way these signs were used." In other words, she and Nowell have shown that these markings are no mere abstract scribbles but appear to be a code that was painted on to rock by the Cro-Magnon people, who lived in Europe 30,000 years ago. They seem to have found evidence that some form of written language was being attempted by our Stone Age ancestors, an idea that - if substantiated - would push back the recognised birth of writing from about 6,000 years ago, as produced by the first agrarian societies, to an incredible 30,000 years ago.

Von Petzinger and Nowell remain cautious, however. "We cannot use the 'L' or 'W' words yet," says Nowell. "This is not writing as we know it or language as we understand it. However, in these caves we are looking at the patterning of symbols, and if we can unravel that, we can get to their meaning."

Their caution is understandable. Yet the evidence is striking. For example, von Petzinger has found one set of five symbols - "II ^ III X II" - to be especially common, appearing on walls like a recurring motif. Intriguingly, she has recently found the sequence in another, unexpected location. "At St Germain de la Rivière, north of Bordeaux, the skeleton of a young woman - dated as being around 15,500 years old - was discovered with a necklace made of the teeth of red deer," adds von Petzinger. "Three of those teeth have markings on them: 'II ^' was on one; 'III' on another; and 'X II' on the third. We have our five common symbols appearing on a necklace."

At this time, there were no red deer in France and it is thought the necklace teeth came from Spain, possibly as items of trade between different tribes. Obsidian and other goods are also known to have been exchanged by groups from these regions. But if the necklace pieces arrived by this route, were the symbols carved on to them before or after they arrived in France? If it was the former, this suggests a crude form of written language may have already linked the different groups of Cro-Magnon hunter-gatherers then living in southern Europe. Perhaps the symbols make up the letters of a name or it's possible they contained a religious message.

"It is impossible to tell today, but the deer teeth are certainly very important information," says Nowell. "They suggest that the five symbols represent three specific units of meaning. We couldn't tell that from the cave paintings, where they appear lumped together. This may not be writing as we know it but equally, these are not random doodles on a wall."

In effect, this work is part of an information revolution, adds von Petzinger. "Scientists had noticed these symbols before, but until we made our database we could not analyse them properly. Today, I can ask my database any question I like. For example, how many hectiforms are found at each cave that were painted, say, between 15,000 and 20,000 years ago? That slowly pulls out the patterns."

Their work has one other critically important aspect, however. Those strings of symbols seem to have been in widespread use 30,000 years ago, as modern humans spread through Europe, having finally seen off the Neanderthals. The question is: when did modern humans first develop and use them? Did Homo sapiens invent them after we arrived in Europe or do they have an even older lineage? Is it possible that our ancestors carried them out of their African homelands when they first began their global diaspora, about 70,000 years ago?

The answers to these questions reveal a key division in the world of palaeontology and anthropology. On one hand, scientists such as Richard Klein, of Stanford University, Nicholas Conard, of Tübingen University in Germany, and others argue that advanced human behaviour - involving use of complex symbols, art and sophisticated tools - did not appear until about 35,000 years ago, during a sudden flowering of creativity called the Great Leap Forward. Pointing to works such as those at Chauvet, Lascaux and other caves, and to discoveries that suggest that musical instruments, boats and religious objects were first made around this time, proponents of this theory argue that an abrupt change in our behaviour - possibly due to mutations in our DNA that affected our intellect and brain structures - occurred as we began to pour into Europe. These changes then triggered a cultural revolution that later spread round the world.

Other scientists disagree, among them Alison Brooks, of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, and Professor Peter Mitchell, at Oxford. They argue that there is plenty of evidence to indicate that humans had reached their full intellectual potential long before they left Africa. Recent discoveries made in South Africa include tiny flint points, which may be the first arrows ever made, and beautifully crafted pieces of ochre that suggest works of arts and jewellery were being created there 70,000 to 90,000 years ago. There was no Great Leap Forward, a concept that Mitchell has described as "Eurocentric nonsense".

Does the work of von Petzinger and Nowell shed any light on this division? After all, their work focuses closely on the crucial period when the Great Leap Forward is supposed to have occurred. Do any of those symbols at Lascaux, Chauvet and Rouffignac appear in earlier forms of art found in South Africa? According to von Petzinger, the answer is probably yes. Many of the swirls, crosses, circles, open angles and crosshatches seen in France are also found in far earlier works from Africa. For example, the open-angle symbol can be seen on engravings at Blombos cave in South Africa, where artistic artefacts about 75,000 years old have been found.

"When you look at the symbols on the caves in France and Spain, you have to realise that these are things our ancestors were already comfortable with," says von Petzinger. "They had been using them for a long time." In fact, she adds, works of equivalent majesty to those painted on cave walls in France were probably created in earlier times, but have been lost or have decayed. "Previous symbols tended to be carved into perishables, such as wood and skins, which have now disintegrated."

In other words, the artistic genius responsible for Chauvet was part of our African birthright.As Nowell says: "Caves are funny little microcosms that protect paint. If it wasn't for the fact that these people decided to put some of their art there, then we might never have realised just how advanced they were artistically. In fact, the populations that produced these artists were people just like you or me."

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Did Stone Age cavemen talk to each other in symbols?

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isit the caves of Pech Merle, Font-de-Gaume and Rouffignac in southern France and you will witness some of the most breathtaking art our planet has to offer. Images of bisons, lions and other creatures loom from the cavern walls. Herds of horses and the occasional rhino, not to mention the odd mammoth and giant bull, parade across the rocks.

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I first encountered Sharbat Gula in 1984, in Pakistan, when she was an orphan living in a refugee camp just outside of Peshawar with her grandmother and siblings. One of the photographs I took of her became known around the world as Afghan Girl. She became the face of refugees for many years.

Today, more than three decades later and despite having one of the most famous faces on the planet, Sharbat Gula is still a displaced person - one who is now facing up to 14 years in prison for the same reasons that brought her to a refugee camp all those years ago. With her arrest last week for living illegally in Pakistan and her current imprisonment, she is now being made into a symbol of unwanted migrants around the world.

Gula is one of the estimated 3 million Afghan refugees who currently reside in Pakistan. A widow and an orphan, she has lived in the country virtually all her adult life. She has endeavoured to raise her four children alone. She represents all the brave women and men who will endure any pain and hardship to protect the most precious thing they have - their children.

Last week authorities from Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency raided her apartment and arrested her for allegedly having false identity documents. She could face deportation, prison and fines of up to $5,000. Her bail has been denied. I find Gula's treatment by the authorities impossible to understand. They seem to want to humiliate her, and appear to have gone out of their way to treat her with disrespect.

Hundreds of thousands of other Afghan refugees face the same situation. The United Nations Refugee Agency has estimated there are 1 million unregistered Afghans living in Pakistan. Gula's situation is not unique, and in the media circus of the past week it seems she has already been tried and found guilty in the court of public opinion.

The strength of the picture I took, its success, has to do with Sharbat Gula and her expression: her eyes and their gaze, that fierce look of dignity and determination. It's an honour to be the photographer who took that iconic picture. It has stood the test of time, which is a testament to the picture, but mostly to Gula herself.

Seventeen years later, I went looking for her and was reunited with her, and it was extraordinary. I was thrilled that she was still alive. Gula didn't know that her picture had been published all over the world, but in time she understood. She did remember that I took her picture that day because it was the first time in her life that she had been photographed. The second time was when I was reunited with her.

That fact reminds me of what one of her relatives told CBS News this week, that she is a "simple, illiterate lady" who may not understand legal documents. For over a decade, she didn't realise that millions of people knew her face. Gula's relative said that she was set to return to her father's village in Afghanistan this summer, but had been delayed because of the supposed presence of Islamic State elements nearby.

The raid on her home last week was, I believe, politically motivated. Many believe she was targeted. As her face once symbolised the hopes of countless refugees, the image of her post-arrest mugshot circulated last week was meant to instil fear into other refugees - and to turn the minds of others against the migrant population.

When I first saw that arrest shot, I was saddened by the apparent attempt to humiliate and debase her; but at the same time, I saw that same gaze I first glimpsed decades ago in the Nasir Bagh refugee camp, when an orphan girl stared back at my lens with a proud, haunted look. Sharbat Gula's face, now older, is once again a symbol of the refugee's plight.

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After her arrest, the 'Afghan Girl' is once again a symbol of refugees' plight | Steve McCurry

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I first encountered Sharbat Gula in 1984, in Pakistan, when she was an orphan living in a refugee camp just outside of Peshawar with her grandmother and siblings. One of the photographs I took of her became known around the world as Afghan Girl. She became the face of refugees for many years.

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Map showing the true sizes of countries??

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Map showing the true sizes of countries??

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Art work, school children analysing ‘Weeping Woman’, Picasso:

Dijkstra R (youtube video published 2011). I can see a woman crying: As displayed in the Pompidou Centre Malaga. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb9tw8VF-F8

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Rineke Dijkstra: I can see a woman crying

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Yenawine, P (published on Vimeo 2010). Thinking through art: the Isabella Stewart Gardner School Partnership Program 

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Yenawine, P (published on Vimeo 2010). Thinking through art: the Isabella Stewart Gardner School Partnership Program 

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An excerpt from "Thinking Through Art: The Isabella Stewart Gardner School Partnership Program," in which students discuss work from the museum's collection using VTS.

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United Colours of Benetton advertising campaign attacking prejudice. Advertising can help to make a company appear to have an ethical profile. 

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United Colours of Benetton advertising campaign attacking prejudice. Advertising can help to make a company appear to have an ethical profile. 

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Power of an image to provoke widespread action: Alyan-symbol for refugee crisis and call for action among EU.

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How imagery can shape self-image and identity: visual literacy may help us to interpret images we see on social media

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Myra by Marcus Harvey- created out of handprints of children after Moors Murders for yba exhibition. Moving tribute to victims or distasteful?