Communication boards help nonverbal kids communicate at the park.
Taking your kids to the playground is supposed to be fun.
You chase them around, hold them up on the monkey bars, follow them down the slide — it's a hoot!
(Or, if you're exhausted and overstimulated like so many parents, you take a little quiet time to scroll your phone on the bench while your child plays happily — there's zero shame in doing so.)
But for parents of children with autism or other special needs — especially when those kids are nonverbal — a trip to the park can be filled with stress and anxiety.
Being in an outside environment that you can't control and having few ways to clearly communicate with your child is stressful and even dangerous.
Now more and more communities are installing special picture boards that make playgrounds and other public spaces more accessible to nonverbal kids.
Autism communication boards, more formally known as Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) boards, are a game-changer.
These larges signs feature colorful pictures and icons that help children — and people of all ages — with verbal challenges communicate.
Smarty Symbols
Typically, you'll find them at playgrounds and public parks, where the boards might have pictures corresponding to things a child might want to do like Climb, or Slide.
Smarty Symbols
There may be pictures for Friend or for Share, or for things kids might want like Food, Water, or to go to the Bathroom.
Kids are able to point at the little logos to communicate efficiently and clearly with their caretakers or even with other kids.
Smarty Symbols
For children with budding language skills, the boards often include a full alphabet so kids can spell out words by pointing or touching.
What's amazing is that these boards not only make playgrounds and parks safer and more inclusive for autism families, they actually open up a gateway for nonverbal kids to play with other children.
Parents may be well-versed in some of the nonverbal communication methods their kids use, but other children at the park might not be. These boards make it easier for a child with autism to find a friend to go down the slide with them or go on the climbing wall together.
As an added bonus, public PECS boards invoke a lot of curiosity which helps kids and even adults learn more about folks who may have different ways of communicating.
And the boards aren't just for nonverbal children with autism! They're a great and fun tool for younger children who are just learning how to read and speak, empowering them to communicate and interact more fully with the world around them.
At home, children with autism often have smaller versions of these boards — or they have special tablets loaded with tools to help them communicate.
But out in the chaos of the real-world and without these tools, communications breakdowns are a major risk.
With 1 in every 36 children having autism (a number that's been on the rise) according to the CDC, these boards are a crucial public health investment for towns across the country.
PECS boards in public spaces is an idea that's really catching on. There are dozens of news stories from the last year or two of counties or town in the U.S. and UK, in particular, installing these boards.
Union County in New Jersey added boards to several of its most popular parks.
Teddy Bear Park in Lake Placid got a custom board earlier this year.
And Oyster Bay in Long Island, NY added communication boards to nearly a dozen of its parks and beaches!
You can even find highly customized boards in places like school libraries, school nurse offices, or sports fields — all with special pictures and communications tools that are suited to that particular environment.
Smarty Symbols, one of the main manufacturers and advocates for the use of these boards, has shipped hundreds of boards since 2022.
The prevalence of PECS or autism communication boards in public spaces is a truly amazing sign of progress
Our understanding of nonverbal autism and our willingness to make public space more inclusive has come a long way.
Therapy designed to encourage or even "force" nonverbal children with autism to speak is highly controversial, and there's a lot of debate over its ethics and effectiveness.
But what's clear is that tools like picture boards and communication boards do not delay or hinder anyone's ability to learn to read or speak.
They're an extra tool that keeps kids safe and happy — which is exactly what every kid should feel when they're at the playground with their family.
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An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
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Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.