Note: Kavya is a fictional persona created to illustrate how a learner and educator might use EdQueries’ AAC activities. Any resemblance to a specific individual is coincidental.
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Building Something for Learners Who Communicate Differently
Kavya is six years old and attends a special school in Bengaluru. She is non-verbal and uses picture symbols to ask for what she wants — a glass of water, a turn on the swing, a break from a noisy classroom. Her speech-language therapist has built a small AAC symbol board around her, and Kavya is getting good at using it during therapy sessions.
The hard part is what happens between sessions. Her special educator wants Kavya practising the same core vocabulary at school and at home — not a different set of pictures that confuses the system she is already learning. That consistency is exactly what we are building toward with a new course on EdQueries: AAC Core Vocabulary.
What’s Already Live — AAC Core Vocabulary
We have started building this course in public. Eight games are live right now under the Symbols and Actions section, all designed for early AAC users — learners with autism, cerebral palsy, or intellectual disability who are just starting to recognise and use core vocabulary symbols.
- Tell Me Where (four games) — spatial vocabulary: in, on, under, in front of
- What Do You Want? — requesting practice using WANT, MORE, STOP
- Match the Action — matching action symbols (eat, drink, sleep) to real photographs
- People Around Me — a memory-pairs game for ME, YOU, MUM, DAD
- Sorting Words — sorting symbols into “things” and “actions”
The Game: How “Tell Me Where” Works
Each round shows a real photograph — a ball sitting in a box, a cup placed on a table — and the learner taps the symbol that matches where the object is. There is no clip art here on purpose. Real photos help learners connect the symbol on the screen to the same scene they will encounter at home or in the classroom. Choices are kept to four or fewer per screen, with high-contrast backgrounds and large symbol tiles, so the activity stays accessible for learners who are easily overwhelmed by visual clutter.
What’s Coming Next
This is the first batch of a larger course. More games are already in production — building from single symbols toward two- and three-symbol combinations like “I want ___” and “I see ___,” and then into functional requesting across home, school, and community settings. Each new batch goes through a special educator and speech-language pathologist review before it goes live, which is part of why we are releasing it gradually rather than all at once.
Once the full set of activities is built and reviewed, AAC Core Vocabulary will launch as a complete, structured course. For now, the eight games above are ready to use — and they are a good place for any early AAC learner to start.
Measurable Outcomes
- Faster, more accurate symbol recognition across repeated attempts
- Requesting behaviour that generalises beyond the screen — observable at snack time or playtime
- Reduced reliance on adult prompting for simple yes/no or want/stop choices
- A vocabulary foundation ready for combining into short sentences later
How This Helps in Real Life
For a learner like Kavya, practising “Tell Me Where” at home means the same spatial vocabulary shows up at snack time — “the biscuit is in the jar,” “your shoes are under the bed.” At school, an educator can use “What Do You Want?” as a five-minute warm-up before a session, reinforcing the requesting skills already being built in speech therapy. None of this replaces therapy — it gives the same vocabulary more places to be practised, which is usually what generalisation needs most.
Want to see where this fits with EdQueries’ existing AAC support? Explore the AAC and communication activities on EdQueries — including over 49 existing games for non-speaking and minimally verbal learners. To understand the thinking behind activities like these, read about how gamified learning works for special needs learners. And if you are a therapist or special educator building a caseload around AAC goals, see how EdQueries supports special educators with IEP-aligned activities.
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