Tags
adaptive living tools, brain injury, cricketdiane, disabilities, head injury, independent living, mental disabilities, mental health, ptsd, stroke, tools for people with disabilities, visual identifiers, visual languages
These are adaptive living tools of the kind I use in visual communications and for visual identifiers –
Visual Language Tools by CricketDiane 2013
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After writing the two posts found here about my personal disabilities, current experiences with government programs while making a long-distance move to New York, going through a hurricane in a place not very prepared for it and having the impacts of my disabilities annoying and obvious to me again – I thought maybe it would be a good time to extend to others a little of what I know is helpful for it. I use visual languages and visual tools to serve as communication devices, memory aids and mnemonics, as strategies for me to learn and to do things, as well as having used them to make up the difference for my disabilities.
So, the day that I posted the letter about what had been happening when I moved here especially as it was affected by my disabilities and the post specifically describing some about them, it was because I was so very angry about what had happened and the way others were affecting my opportunities to move forward. I didn’t really have any better place to discuss those things, there was not anyone around to talk with about it and the times I started to post about it and didn’t (before that) had already been numerous.
To put into writing some of these things, I started putting it into a book that will be published over on Amazon and created a store on zazzle to offer versions of the visual tools where people can have them. So far, the book is going to be a paperback styled layout with no pictures, but eventually (and maybe for a second version) I want to put photos of the actual tools that I use along with how they are used in visual descriptions to go with the written materials. Since beginning the book, it has been nearly half completed by writing about twenty pages a day in it but there has not been any editorial efforts being made on it yet. Those twenty pages per day, may only be a few after sentence long paragraphs are changed to reflect something readable.
Visual Language Tools for Adaptive Living by CricketDiane 2013
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Adaptive Living Tools – Visual Languages Identifiers and Communication Devices by CricketDiane 2013
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Visual Identifiers Adaptive Living Tools by CricketDiane 2013
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When I was using these visual identifiers and other visual language tools, I didn’t have anything to use as fancy and already constructed as these cards, stickers, magnets and small invitations that could be stood up on a counter or somewhere to remind me of something or to say something. I made them of other things, colored them with markers and used folds in the actual post-it note of color or other stiffer cardboard. Then, the varieties of form, shape and color could be used to visually identify certain things – whether it was to mean, now or not now, go this way as green is partially intended to mean or any number of other things about going or doing which green and its shades of color meant (to me.)
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Today Card Adaptive Living Tools Visual Identifiers and Communication Tools by CricketDiane 2013
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Visual Identifiers and Communication Tools for Adaptive Living and Visual Languages by CricketDiane 2013
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Visual Communication Devices, Memory Aids and Visual Identifiers by CricketDiane 2013
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Visual Communication Tools and Visual Identifiers for Adaptive Living Strategies and Visual Languages by CricketDiane 2013
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It is not necessary for any of these tools to have words on them and when I used them, they did not. It was the shapes and juxtaposition to one another of colors and their shapes that identified things to say, or to remember, or to use for notes to myself about something like a sequence of things I had learned. Most things in everyday tasks require a series of steps that have to be learned – even in getting dressed. To remember these sequences and the learning involved in them, I could either place the cards and other things I was using as mnemonic devices and visual language tools within close proximity of one another to remember and to remind me of the sequence and the manner in which I learned it to make the information more accessible to me later or as mnemonic devices to be reminded of the whole process and sequence or simply the need to do that activity encompassing all of it. That means, three days later – I might not know anything about how to do it unless a mnemonic tool could remember it to me>remind me of it and how I learned it ( whatever it may have been.) That is how the visual identifiers and those parts of the strategies helped me to help myself despite my disabilities. They also provided me with ways to communicate with others – particularly at home.
– cricketdiane
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(I added words on some of them like this reference for the days of the week colors on a coffee mug and on some of the “Now” and “Not Now” tools for them to be more useful in practice for those in the family or proximity of their use who are not accustomed to visual languages nor find them a critical part of everyday living, though for me those words are not necessary nor of much help to me.)
Color Code It Adaptive Living Tools Visual Identifiers Chart Days of the Week – CricketDiane Designs
Visual Identifiers Adaptive Living And Visual Language Tools by CricketDiane 2013
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Visual Identifiers and Adaptive Living Tools by CricketDiane 2013
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Visual Identifiers Cards and Tools for Adaptive Living and Visual Languages by CricketDiane 2013
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Adaptive Living Tools Visual Identifiers, Memory Aids and Visual Communication Tools by CricketDiane 2013
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Visual Tools for Adaptive Living by CricketDiane 2013
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Visual Adaptive Living Tools, Visual Identifiers and Communication Devices, Memory Aids, Mnemonics and Organizing Tools by CricketDiane 2013
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High Contrast Visual Language Tools for Adaptive Living by CricketDiane 2013
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Visual Tools for Adaptive Living, Communication and Mnemonics by CricketDiane 2013
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The actual store address of the new store at zazzle that I am making with the adaptive living tools and visual identifiers, mnemonics, memory aids and other organizing tools with a visual, and color-based language focus – is here –
http://www.zazzle.com/adaptivelivingtools*
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I am in the process of designing them from those I used in my own world to help supersede my own disabilities which left me with predominantly visual language resources internally to use rather than language systems that were verbal and left-brained functioning – certain disabilities do have more likely a range of vulnerabilities to be less capable or thoroughly incapable in verbally based language resources. These tools can be of some help by adapting them to suit the specific needs and requirements of the living aspects of these disabilities.
The book that I am writing about my own experiences with these disabilities that I have and the development of the tools and visual language based strategies that I’ve used – is underway. It will be offered through Amazon and for the Kindle. The first version will be paperback style with words only and hopefully, the second version using the text will have diagrams, show the tools in images and contain more reference materials to seek out about the various subject matter. This is to say that I am writing the anecdotal materials now and the rest will be added in second versions.
It has been very hard to write about these things in this way. At points many years ago, I wrote a Field Guide to Independent Living but it was never published and wrote several pieces about how it all happened that left me with brain injury and post-traumatic disorder in the first place – this is not that. However, in writing those and other things, I didn’t need to describe my use of the tools and doing that for these writings and offering the tools to the public, has been harder because of it. But I am doing it.
– cricketdiane
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There is also a range of magnets, posters and cards that I’m doing on the Adaptive Living Tools store about foods, vegetables, fruits and other things involved with remembering to eat, fixing food, shopping for foods and remembering how to do those things as they’ve been learned. They can be used by people with disabilities for independent living (even if that independence is not fully independent in a separate living environment yet,) and by those with other purposes for them – around children, in the lives of elderly people who need to remember to eat, in school settings and even in office snack rooms as a reminder to eat healthy.
These food based visual identifier tools are among the handiest of things that helped me to remember to eat and to know how to find those things in my own home when I could identify that I was hungry – which believe it or not, I would forget. There may be a refrigerator there, but I would not know to look there for foods within it and would forget that it has a door on its surface which, once opened would show me the contents of that solid surface presented to me visually every time I passed it.
With a magnet on it of those foods, I may have been able to remember it better – but having not had that available to me, I used a number of other ways. These including cut out pictures of foods taped to the fridge and cabinets, children’s plastic decal stickers sold at Christmastime with candies and candy canes that could be wet on the back to cling to a window and will do the same thing on a refrigerator, and a variety of other things, including a small magnet made to look like a miniature refrigerator that my children and I took the door off one side to show its shelves and drawers inside then kept on the outside of the real refrigerator. (It was sold at the large discount chain store nearby and then later, at dollar stores about the time I had to buy another one. Now, I would buy two of them in the first place and would encourage anyone using these kinds of things to do that as well, especially when it is something like the miniature refrigerator magnet which could end up being completely broken underfoot or lost even though it is still needed – and likely hard to find in any store again.)
There are currently only a few of the foods magnets, cards, stickers and posters made on my store, but there will be a full range of them as I get on with it. These use my photographs of foods and I will be taking more photos to be specific to this effort. I think there is only one more in my stock of photos I’ve already taken and it is of an artichoke sitting on the table because I thought it was so pretty. That was not exactly taken for the same purpose, but as with these vegetables from a street vendor in New York City – are the photographs I’m using until I can get the others made specifically for these sets. I’m working on it.
Foods Magnets to Remember to Eat – Visual Identifiers for Independent Living and to use as Adaptive Living Tools for People with Disabilities by CricketDiane 2013
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This is the address for the section of the Adaptive Living Tools store that offers these and other visual identifiers concerning foods and remembering to eat, shopping tools, food preparation tools will also be found here, and that offers the posters and tools that can be used to encourage healthy eating as well –
http://www.zazzle.com/adaptivelivingtools/gifts?cg=196943855604854866
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These are the addresses of the two (and then a third) post where I discussed above, having started posting more about these personal challenges with my disabilities that yielded the adaptive living tools and visual language systems of visual identifiers and mnemonic devices – (what happened when I was moving to New York is included in them) –
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And a bit more about it is found here –
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And here is where the book will be found – oh wait – its not at that point yet, but it is registered on Amazon already with its ISBN numbers already issued – I’ll add the address here for it as soon as the writing has been edited and entered at their site resources for it to be offered for sale to the public there and on Kindle.
– cricketdiane
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