Supporting children and youth with a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often means finding ways to make the world more predictable, understandable, and manageable. One of the most effective ways to do this is through visual supports. While verbal information can feel fleeting or overwhelming for some children, visual tools can offer something that feels more stable. Visual tools can be looked at, touched, arranged, and revisited, and over time become essential anchors for communication, learning, and independence. Let’s take a closer look at what they are, how to use them at home, and why they can have such a powerful impact.
What Are Visual Supports?
Visual supports are any tools that turn information into something you can see rather than hear. They can be as simple as a set of pictures or as advanced as a speech-generating app. For many individuals with an ASD diagnosis, particularly those who show a preference for visualizing information, seeing that information laid out clearly makes it easier to understand expectations, express needs, and participate more fully in their environment.
It has been shown that many individuals with ASD process visual information more efficiently than spoken instructions. Words are quick and abstract. Images, on the other hand, stay still, giving people more time to absorb what’s being communicated. They also reduce the cognitive load that comes with interpreting language, especially when it’s fast, complex, or emotionally charged.
Types of Visual Supports You Can Use
Visual supports come in a wide range of forms. Choosing the right ones often depends on your child’s communication level, learning style, and personal preferences.
Picture Boards and Picture Cards
Picture boards and cards are some of the most familiar visual tools. They use simple images to represent objects, activities, emotions or concepts. Children can use the simple images to request items, express feelings, or answer questions. This can be particularly beneficial for children with minimal verbal capacities or who are still actively developing expressive language.
Picture cards also help make abstract ideas more concrete. For example, a child learning about emotions such as ‘happy’ or ‘frustrated’ may understand these concepts more clearly through a set of emotion cards featuring facial expressions that represent them.
Visual Schedules
Visual schedules can help children understand the organized, sequenced structure of their day. The schedules could show the order of morning tasks, for example: get dressed, eat breakfast, brush teeth, with each task represented by an image. A schedule could outline a classroom schedule, for example: sit at the desk, independent worksheets, then recess. Transitions can be particularly difficult for some people with ASD. Having a visual outline of the order of daily events can reduce anxiety and make it easier to shift from one activity to the next.
Research consistently shows that visual schedules increase independence, reduce challenging behaviours, and improve engagement, especially during transitions or unpreferred activities.
Choice Boards
By providing visual options, choice boards can provide children with a more independent way to make decisions. Choice boards can be beneficial when selecting activities, expressing emotions, selecting coping strategies, and much more. Choice boards promote autonomy and can provide a way for children who have difficulties in verbal communication to advocate for themselves in a low-pressure way.
Social Stories and Narrative Supports
Social stories use simple text and visuals to explain social expectations or upcoming events. They can be useful for preparing children for unfamiliar experiences, such as going to the dentist, meeting new people, or going on a family outing. The type of tools can be particularly helpful when trying to make social rules and expectations more understandable.
Assistive Technology
Technology is constantly expanding what’s possible. Speech-generating tools, symbol-based communication systems, and articulation and language-building tools are powerful visual supports (some available apps are listed here: https://chicagoabatherapy.com/resources/articles/top-10-apps-for-children-with-autism-spectrum-disorder/).
These digital tools can help people with ASD express their needs, practice language, and build communication skills in an accessible, engaging way. Speech-generating apps can help to provide a voice for children who may have difficulties with verbal communication, while symbol-based apps use pictures or icons to support understanding and choice-making. Articulation and language-building tools help develop pronunciation, vocabulary, and sentence formation. These apps leverage technology to enhance independence, social interaction, and learning outcomes for individuals with difficulties in communication.
The Benefits of Visual Supports
Visual supports can have a wide range of benefits across communication, learning, and daily functioning. Some of their most powerful benefits include:
Enhancing Communication
Visual tools can give children alternative ways to express themselves and communicate their needs. In certain cases, they serve as a bridge to developing verbal communication skills. For others, they can be a primary way of communicating with others.
Visual supports can:
- make it easier to express wants and needs
- reduce frustration around communication
- help with understanding spoken instructions
- support back-and-forth interactions
Supporting Learning
Many children with ASD thrive with concrete and visually organized instruction. Visual tools can help break down information into smaller, more manageable pieces.
This can:
- improve comprehension
- increase engagement and motivation
- help clarify expectations
- make abstract ideas more concrete
Studies have shown that using visual schedules or video models can significantly improve independence and increase participation among children with ASD during structured and unstructured learning activities
Strengthening Executive Functioning
Executive functioning skills, such as planning, organization, and time management, can be particularly challenging for people with ASD.
Visual tools can help by:
- showing concrete step-by-step sequences
- offering visual timers to signal transitions
- organizing routines into predictable patterns
Leveraging Visual Thinking Strengths
Many children with ASD have strong abilities in visual thinking. This has been shown in strong performances in puzzles, route memorization, categorization tasks, and other spatial reasoning skills. Visual supports lean into these strengths instead of fighting against them. By presenting information visually, visual supports allow children to process it in a way that is better suits their natural learning style.
Increasing Confidence and Reducing Anxiety
When expectations are unclear, anxiety tends to rise. Visual supports can help to provide clarity, reducing stress and allowing children to feel more in control.
They can help individuals to understand:
- What’s happening
- What’s expected
- What choices are available
- What comes next
Using Visual Supports at Home
Many of the most effective visual supports are simple and inexpensive. Flashcards with images of household items, emotions, and vocabulary can be used during play or routines to help foster understanding, build verbal recognition and communication skills. Homemade schedules using printed images or photos can serve as effective visual schedules to provide more structure and understanding.
There are also many free or low-cost resources from organizations like Autism Speaks, autism-focused magazines, university research centres, and Applied Behavioural Analysis (ABA) clinics that share printable visual tools. Numerous resources for accessing free visual support tools are listed at the end of this blog.
Making Visual Supports Work
The most effective visual systems share two qualities: consistency and accessibility. Using a support every day helps it become familiar and reliable; whether it’s a morning schedule or a choice board, repetition reinforces understanding. Visual tools should be easy to reach and easy to see – that might mean keeping them on a wall, a clipboard, a fridge, or creating shortcuts on a tablet.
Final Thoughts
Visual supports aren’t just tools; they can help create a personalized foundation for developing communication, confidence, and independence. They can help children with ASD to interact with their world in a way that utilizes their strengths and gives them more control.
Additional Resources for Accessing Visual Support Tools:
A wide variety of customizable visual supports, including activity schedules, token boards, choice boards, symbols, visual cards, and more: https://abaresources.com/free3/
Free, customizable visual supports, including visual schedules, First/Then boards, and planners: https://aidinpa.org/resource/blank-template-support-tools/
Numerous completed and blank template visual supports to support interventions, along with explanations and demonstrations: https://ocali.org/resource_gallery_of_interventions
Customizable social stories templates: https://www.autismspeaks.org/templates-personalized-social-stories
Downloadable tools, including daily routine schedules, communication and emotion cards, sensory break visuals, social stories, reward charts, and learning flashcards: https://autismroutineprintables.com/
References:
Loring, W., Malow, B., & Warren, Z. (n.d.). Visual supports and autism spectrum disorders. Vanderbilt Kennedy Centre. https://vkc.vumc.org/assets/files/resources/visualsupports.pdf
The role of Visual Supports in Enhancing Learning for Autism | Advanced Autism Services. (2025). https://www.advancedautism.com/post/the-role-of-visual-supports-in-enhancing-learning-for-autism
Using Visual Supports in Autism – Apex ABA therapy. (2024). https://www.apexaba.com/blog/using-visual-supports-in-autism#:~:text=schedules%20and%20timetables.-,Picture%20Exchange%20Communication%20System%20(PECS),a%20support%20network%20for%20autism.
Using visual tools in autism therapy. (2025). https://www.magnetaba.com/blog/visual-tools-in-autism-therapy
Wolmark, M. (2025). Understanding the use of visual supports in ABA. https://www.goldenstepsaba.com/resources/understanding-the-use-of-visual-supports-in-aba