Objects of reference or tactile symbols? What I use, and when?

This is the question I get asked more than any other, usually by a TA who has just been handed a box of objects of reference and told to get on with it. Sometimes it comes from a parent who has seen a tactile symbol at school and wants to know why we are not just using the real thing at home.

Both are good questions, and the honest answer is that it is not a choice between one or the other. Most of the learners I work with need both, at different points, and often on the same day.

Here is how I think about it after ten years of getting it wrong and then slightly less wrong.

What an object of reference actually is

An object of reference is a real item, or part of one, that stands for an activity. A spoon for lunch. A swimming float for the pool. A seatbelt buckle for the minibus.

The power of it is that there is almost nothing to decode. The learner touches the thing, and the thing is genuinely part of what is about to happen. For someone at a very early stage of understanding, or for someone with a visual impairment who is building their picture of the day through their hands, that direct link matters enormously.

The trouble with objects of reference is practical. They are bulky. They get lost. Half of them live in a different cupboard from the other half. You cannot easily carry twelve of them round a supermarket, and you certainly cannot fit a swimming float in a school bag.

There is also a subtler problem. Because objects of reference are so tied to one specific activity, it is hard to build them into anything resembling a sentence. A spoon means lunch. It does not easily mean "I want", or "more", or "finished".

What a tactile symbol is

A tactile symbol is a consistent raised shape that stands for a word or an activity, and it can be felt rather than seen. It sits one step further along than an object of reference, because the learner has to hold in mind that this shape means that thing.

That extra step is exactly what makes it useful. Symbols are small, they are consistent, and you can line them up. Once a learner is working with symbols you can start doing the things that actually change their day. Now and next. Choice between two. A short sequence of what is coming. Core words that work across every activity rather than one.

You can also standardise them. If every adult in the room is using the same shape for "finished", the learner gets the same message from the classteacher, the TA, the therapist and the taxi escort. That consistency does more for communication than any single resource ever will.

How I know a learner is ready to move on

There is no test for this, and I am suspicious of anyone who says there is. What I look for is a handful of signs across a few weeks:

• The learner reaches for the object before the activity, rather than only recognising it once they are already there
• They show a reaction when the wrong object appears, which tells me they are anticipating rather than just accepting
• They can cope with the object being presented slightly out of context, for example in the classroom rather than at the pool door
• They are starting to tolerate a paired symbol sitting alongside the object without pushing it away

That last one is the important one, because it is also the method.

Doing the move without losing the learner

The mistake I made early on was swapping. Objects out, symbols in, new term, fresh start. It did not work, and looking back it was never going to.

What works is pairing. You present the object and the symbol together, every single time, for as long as it takes. Weeks, usually. Months for some learners, and that is fine. The learner starts to associate the two because they always arrive as a pair.

Then you fade, slowly. The symbol stays, the object appears a bit less often, and you watch. If understanding wobbles, the object comes straight back and you have lost nothing. Nobody has failed. You just had more information than you did before.

A few things I would tell my younger self:

Start smaller than feels sensible. Two symbols. Maybe three. It is very tempting to build a lovely full set of twenty because it looks impressive on the wall, and it will teach nobody anything.

Keep the placement identical. Same board, same orientation, same side of the desk. If the learner has to relearn where to look or reach every time, you are testing their memory rather than their communication.

Get every adult using the same one. One symbol for "finished" across the whole team beats four excellent competing systems. This is worth a five minute conversation at a staff meeting and it will save you a term.

Give it longer than you think. I have watched learners show nothing for six weeks and then use a symbol correctly, unprompted, in week seven. If we had stopped at week five we would have written it off as not suitable.

What I would start with

If you are setting this up from scratch, I would begin with the words the learner needs most across the whole day rather than the ones tied to a single activity. More. Stop. Finished. Help. Drink. Toilet.

Those are the words that give someone control over what is happening to them, and they transfer everywhere. Activity-specific symbols can come later once the habit of communicating is there.

We make our tiles for exactly this reason. Consistent shapes, small enough to carry, tough enough to survive a school bag, and available with or without braille. Our Core Communication Set is the one most schools start with, and if you want to see whether the shapes suit your learner before committing, our sample pack is free apart from the postage.

If you are somewhere in the middle of all this and not sure what to try next, send me a message. I teach a Post-14 class and have worked with almost all ages, and I am usually happy to talk it through, whether you end up buying anything or not.