Our mission

We provide tools and resources to improve the lives of people with communication disabilities.

Our tools and resources help:

  • Speech and language therapists use their time more efficiently.
  • Parents/carers support the communication of their children or other family members.
  • Schools and colleges support their pupils and students with communication difficulties.
  • Services such as healthcare, community organisations, and care providers be more communication accessible.
  • Businesses such as retail, leisure, and transport be communication accessible.

Our work areas

Commtap resources

Practical and easy to use materials and instructions for use by teachers, parents/carers, and support workers to support and develop children’s and adults’ communication.

Current projects:

  • Resource packs

Go to site.

Commtap symbol tools

Our key offer is an add-in for PowerPoint which makes it simple to add communication symbols to text. Communication symbols greatly improve access to text-based information.

More details.

British key word signing dictionary

A free dictionary of signs used in the two principle UK key word signing systems (Makaton and Signalong).

Go to site.

New projects

Please get in touch if you would like to collaborate on any of these projects.

Communication resource development project – children

Add a further 300 resource pages and 20 training videos to the site for use by parents and education staff with children. Estimated funding required: £8,000.

Communication resource development project – adults with learning disabilities

Speech and language therapy support for adults with lifelong communication or learning disabilities is sparse. This project will help service providers, friends, and family to better support those with these kinds of disabilities. It will help limited speech and language therapy services to maximise their effectiveness. We will add 250 resource pages and 30 training videos to the site. Estimated funding required: £10,000.

Key word signing dictionary development

Add another 2,000 signs to the sign dictionary – bringing the total to 4,000 signs. Estimated funding required: £8,000.

Open symbols

There are no restrictions on who can use spoken or written words or manual signs (such as BSL): you do not need to seek permission to use words, and you do not need to provide attribution when you use them.

If you need communication symbols for your communication, there is no symbol set in existence which gives the same freedom to communicate as spoken, written or signed words. You always need to provide attribution and there will usually be situations where you are simply not allowed to use them at all. Around 10% of the UK population either use or could benefit from communication symbols to support their communication.

What is required is a public domain symbol set which has no restrictions on use. Such a symbol set would need to contain at least 10,000 symbols to be viable, and have an ongoing development strategy.

This project would require a minimum initial outlay of at least £200,000 and a long term commitment to maintenance – around £30,000 per year.

We are seeking partners to join this project.