GIRAF
About GIRAF Our Apps History For Students Contact

A system project at Aalborg University

Visual tools for autistic children with little or no verbal speech.

GIRAF is visual schedules, communication boards and meal plans, built by students and tested with a special-needs school.

See the apps Work on GIRAF
Four pictogram activity cards in a row: lunch, the zoo, a bus ride and home, each with a picture and a tick circle to mark it done
A child's day in Weekplanner: each activity is a pictogram card they can check off.

The project

GIRAF is a system project at Aalborg University's Department of Computer Science, developed with Egebakken Specialskole. The apps are designed and tested with the school in short iterations. They are prototypes, not yet a product in use.

Weekplanner's add-activity editor: options to search, upload or generate a pictogram, a toggle for a generated spoken title, and fields for title, date and repeat days
Adding an activity in Weekplanner: the pictogram and the spoken title can both be generated.

The apps

Three apps.

All three are Flutter apps. Weekplanner runs on the shared giraf-core service for users, organisations and pictograms; VTA and Foodplanner still run their own backends.

Four pictogram activity cards: lunch, the zoo, a bus ride and home
On giraf-core

Weekplanner

Caregivers build a child's day and week from pictograms. The child sees what is happening and in what order, and ticks off each activity as it is done.

Screenshots & details →
A VTA communication board with a visual artefact placed on a talking mat next to its spoken label
In active development

VTA: communication boards

Boards of visual artefacts, each with an image, a label and a sound, shared live between a child and a caregiver. Includes text-to-speech and video calling.

Screenshots & details →
A Foodplanner lunchbox: a photo of a ham-and-bacon sandwich, its name, and the start of its ingredient list
In active development

Foodplanner

Visual meal plans (madpakker) built from photos of real food, for children with selective eating. Based on the Picture Exchange Communication System.

Screenshots & details →

Collaboration

Developed with Egebakken Specialskole.

3 Apps: visual schedules, communication boards and meal plans
3 Educations: Interaction Design, Software Development and Information Technology
100% Open source, at github.com/aau-giraf

Our partner is Egebakken Specialskole in Vodskov. The apps are tested there with a few children and teachers at a time, in the settings where they would be used.

Schools, institutions, researchers and developers who want to be part of the project are welcome. Contact us.

How it's designed

Five principles.

From TEACCH and PECS.

  • 01

    Predictability

    What happens next is always visible.

  • 02

    Visual clarity

    One idea per card, shown in pictures first.

  • 03

    Simplicity

    As few steps as possible.

  • 04

    Consistency

    The same action looks and works the same way everywhere.

  • 05

    Independence

    The child can do it without help.

From the project

Latest news

Fall 2025 semester complete

The Fall 2025 semester is over. The teams worked with Egebakken Specialskole through the semester.

All news →