Free printable communication boards
Paper core boards with ARASAAC symbols, ready to print and laminate. They match SayThrough's on-screen layout exactly, so the same words sit in the same places whether the device is to hand or not.
To print: use the button below, or your browser's print command. Everything except the boards is left off the page automatically, and each board prints on its own sheet. Choose “Save as PDF” if you want to keep or send a copy.
Printing your own board
If the board has been customised at all — buttons added, symbols swapped, your own photos — print that rather than these. Open Settings → Print in the app: it prints the board exactly as it stands, with your symbols and colours in their real positions, either the home board or every page. The sheets below are the boards as they ship, for anyone who has not changed anything yet.
Why a paper board, when you have an app?
Because devices run out of battery, get left in the car, and do not go in the bath, the pool or the sea. A low-tech backup is standard practice in AAC, not a consolation prize — and the moment someone needs one is exactly the moment nobody has time to make one. Print it before you need it.
It has to match the device
This is the part that is usually got wrong. A paper board with the same words in different places is a second thing to learn, and under pressure it is worse than nothing. These boards render the persistent core region of each SayThrough board size, in its real grid, so a hand that knows where more lives on screen finds it in the same place on paper. Print the one that matches the size you set up. How the sizes work.
The boards
One per grid size. These are the words that stay on screen wherever you are in the app — the highest-frequency words, and the only ones that never move.
I
want
go
more
my
noI
you
itwant
likemorego
help
stop
do
feel
look
not
yesnoIyouitmemy
that
what
wherewant
needlike
havegohelpstopdofeellookmorenot
doneyesno
pleasePrinting and using them
- Laminate them, or use a plastic sleeve. A core board lives on a table, in a bag and on the floor. Bare paper lasts about a week.
- Print more than one. One for the bag, one for the classroom, one for the kitchen wall. A board that is in another room is not available.
- Point to the words as you talk, exactly as you would on the device — the paper board is for modelling too, not only for emergencies. How to model AAC.
- Add a photo or two if it helps, but do not rearrange the core words. Everything else on the page can change; their positions cannot.
Licence
The symbols are ARASAAC, published under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA. You are free to print these, use them in therapy, in class and at home, and give copies away — you cannot sell them. What the ARASAAC licence allows.
The paper board is the backup — the app is the main one. Same words, same places, plus everything that will not fit on a sheet.