The pictures do the talking with RFID

RFID helps verbally-impaired children to communicate

How do you communicate with children who have little or no speech due to autism or other developmental disabilities?  And more importantly, how do you help them communicate with you? It's a very difficult task, and one that concerns many parents and specialised educators.

One solution for these families and classrooms is to use a Picture Exchange Communication System, or PECS. PECS uses picture cards to enable children to communicate ideas: for example, with just two cards, a child could share the thought: ‘I want’ – ‘ice cream’ or ‘I see’ – ‘dog.’  PECS is an effective method for many non-verbal children; however, it only works in the presence of an adult who recognises what the cards mean.

Now, however, there is an electronic device about the size of a laptop computer that speaks the child’s chosen words out loud. Specially made picture cards each have an RFID chip in them, and the device itself has an RFID reader built in. When a child moves a picture card over the machine, it pronounces the word.

By allowing phrases to be spoken aloud in this way, RFID opens up possibilities for non-verbal children to communicate with other children, with adults who don’t know the PECS symbols (such as grandparents, for example) and with people who aren’t physically present in the room with them.