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It's an icon-based personal organizer. Picture Planner lets users create visual calendars and print them out, sync them to mobile devices, or share them with friends, family, teachers, and caregivers via Google Calendar.

It's structured and systematic. Picture Planner employs a simple task analysis to guide users through the steps of effective activity planning and it provides pop-up reminders when activities are due.

It's cognitively and physically accessible. Picture Planner is single-click operated. Selection feedback is presented in multiple ways through the use of icons that include graphic images, text labels, and text-to-speech prompts.

It's customizable. It ships with a starter set of icons, but users can add their own photos, symbols, or other images of the people, places, and things that are most meaningful to them.

It's research-based. Picture Planner was developed with support from the US Department of Education with extensive end-user involvement and has undergone thorough usability testing and field evaluation.

It's simple. Picture Planner can be used by a wide variety of individuals who prefer a graphically-driven user interface that is easy to understand. This includes children, elders, individuals with autism and other developmental and intellectual disabilities, individuals with cognitive disabilities related to brain injury, and second language learners.

How Does Picture Planner^TM Work?

It's easy. You create visual schedules on a Mac or Windows computer by stepping through a series of categories and selecting images that describe each event on your calendar.

What are you doing? With Whom? Where? How will you get there? How much money do you need? What things do you need to Bring? What clothes will you need to wear?

Then you can print the schedules out, view them on a mobile device, or share them on Google Calendar. Download the free app from iTunes to sync schedules with your Apple iOS device.

Activities can be described with one icon or as many as you want, and they can be as short as five minutes in duration or as long as you want. So you can schedule everything from getting up to going to school.

Research Support

Picture Planner is a research based application, developed in part through funding from the following organizations and government agencies:

The National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research

Ideas That Work is:
US. Dept. Of Education
The Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP)

User Comments from Our Field-Testing Program “What a great idea.” “Exactly what I need.” “I have been looking for something like this forever.” “A wonderful addition to the tools we use.” “As an AT consultant, this is a tool I could recommend frequently.”