Smarty Symbols Expands to Brazil: A New Era for Inclusive Communication

Smarty Symbols

July 28, 2025

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ROCKWALL, TX and SALVADOR, BAHIA — Smarty Symbols, the leading designer and manufacturer of communication boards solutions in the USA, today announced the opening of its first Latin America office in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil—the hometown of Founder & CEO Barbara Fernandes, M.S., CCC-SLP. This strategic expansion underscores the company’s commitment to making communication accessible and inclusive for all, now reaching Portuguese-speaking communities across Brazil and beyond.

It fills me with immense pride to extend the reach of our work beyond the United States. As an entrepreneur for the past fifteen years, I’ve been unwavering in my commitment to make our digital products available in as many languages as possible. Smarty Symbols communication boards were no different; many of our U.S. boards are bilingual, too. We already have communication boards in Ghana, Mexico, Canada, the Mariana Islands, and the United Kingdom. Now we’re taking our boldest step yet—championing communication access in Brazil’s public spaces. I’m determined to bring the same transformative impact we’ve achieved in the U.S. to children and families across Brazil, ensuring every child can express themselves wherever they are.

About Smarty Symbols and Our Inclusive Solutions

Connecting Through Visual Communication

Smarty Symbols is the leader for designing visual communication solutions that foster inclusion in public spaces. Our mission is straightforward yet profound: to create environments where individuals of all abilities can effectively communicate, engage, and belong.

Our Symbol Library

At the core of everything we do is an extensive library of over 75,000 icons. From emotions and basic actions to location-specific imagery, our symbols can be mixed and matched to reflect the unique characteristics and needs of any community, ensuring that each communication board truly speaks to its users.

Software and Digital Tools

Beyond physical panels, we empower educators, therapists, and caregivers with Smarty Symbols Studio—an intuitive design platform for creating custom visual support materials, including communication boards. Our “tech-forward” approach also integrates with the Expressive Go speech-generating app, providing seamless mobile access to every symbol set, so communication can continue anywhere.

A Personal Connection & Brazil’s Evolution

Barbara Fernandes’s Journey and Vision

Before founding Smarty Symbols, Barbara Fernandes spent four years studying Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology at the Universidade Federal da Bahia. Her academic path took a pivotal turn in 2004, when she was one of only four Brazilian students awarded the FIPSE/CAPES Exchange Program grant for her project, “Promoting the Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Society Through Assistive Technology: Culturally Appropriate Solutions.” This opportunity brought her to the United States, where she went on to earn both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Communication Sciences and Disorders.

More than two decades after leaving Brazil, Barbara’s commitment to inclusive communication remains as strong as ever. On trips home, she admired the government’s investments in disability access—from priority boarding lanes and airport assistance to “Autism Reserved” parking spaces—but she also saw a glaring omission: virtually no augmentative-and-alternative communication boards in public venues. With only three known installations nationwide, she understood that Brazil’s children and families were missing a vital tool for everyday interaction.

Determined to fill this gap, Barbara established Smarty Symbols’ regional office in Salvador, Bahia. Her goal: deliver culturally tailored communication solutions directly to schools, clinics, parks, and other public spaces—ensuring that every community has the means to give a voice to those who need it most.

Local Presence & Community Partnerships

Regional Office in Salvador, Bahia: Acts as a hub for sales, customer support, and rapid customization—making symbols and boards available in local languages and dialects.
Collaboration with Brazilian Specialists: Co-designing symbol sets and installation plans alongside speech-language pathologists, pediatricians, educators, and disability advocates to ensure each board reflects community needs.
Training & Outreach: Hosting workshops for caregivers, therapists, and municipal staff on best practices for deploying and using communication boards in diverse public settings.

Addressing Gaps in Brazil’s Communication Board Landscape

Quality & Representation

Most of the few communication boards currently installed in Brazil rely on icons that overlook the country’s rich cultural and racial diversity. On one of the boards, the only feminine representation is the “mother”. Children seldom see symbols that reflect their own skin tones or hairstyles, undermining both engagement and a sense of belonging. All children deserve to be represented on communication boards. Smarty Symbols’ library, by contrast, was built with inclusion at its core, featuring icons that represent boys and girls across a spectrum of appearances. This ensures every child can recognize themselves in the imagery and feel confident using the boards.

Scale & Consistency

To date, only three communication boards are known to exist in Brazil, each a one-off installation that lacks standardized quality controls. This piecemeal approach drives up per-unit costs and leaves municipalities without a clear roadmap for expansion.

Our goal is to raise the bar for what should be expected of any new communication board place at a public space in Brazil. We want to train and support the community with the knowledge and experience we have gained from thousands of spaces that we have made more inclsuive in the United States.

Tailoring Our Process for Brazil: Beyond Simple Translation

Precision Design Features

Every Smarty Symbols board is more than a collection of pictures—it’s a carefully engineered communication tool. We apply the Fitzgerald Key color-coding system, grouping symbols by grammatical function (nouns, verbs, descriptors, etc.) to support language development and sentence building. Icons are arranged according to grammatical organization, guiding users from simple words (“play,” “ball”) to more complex phrases (“I want to swing,” “Can you help me?”). Each panel also includes clear instructions and awareness wording—for example, “Please point to the word you need” and friendly reminders about taking turns—so that caregivers, therapists, and park staff can facilitate smooth interactions.

Because every environment has its own vocabulary and flow, our team creates a custom plan for each location. Whether it’s a playground, classroom, hospital wing, dentist’s waiting room, farm exhibit, or a sports-themed board (like our popular baseball design), we match symbol selection, panel size, and mounting height to the space’s needs. In the U.S., this process has led to thousands of successful installs—and our image library’s intentional diversity ensures that no matter the community, every child sees themselves represented.

Adapting to Portuguese & New Brazilian Spaces

Translating boards into Portuguese is not just a matter of swapping labels—it demands linguistic and cultural finesse. Our local team and partners helped us fine tune’s Portuguese gender agreement, verb conjugations, and locale-specific terms.

Beyond translation, Brazil’s rich variety of child-centered venues calls for entirely new board types. In addition to playgrounds and schools, we’re designing shopping mall communication boards—complete with icons for escalators, food courts, play zones, and restrooms—a concept not yet available in the U.S. market. By combining our proven design framework with on-the-ground research in Salvador, São Paulo, and beyond, Smarty Symbols is setting a new standard for inclusive communication across Brazil’s diverse public spaces.

With our Salvador office established and Brazilian manufacturing partners secured, Smarty Symbols is poised to begin its first installations in the second semester of 2025. We’re targeting pilot deployments in Salvador and São Paulo—across schools, parks, and clinics—starting in Q3, followed by broader roll-out to additional regions by Q4.

We invite municipalities, schools, healthcare providers, and advocacy organizations to partner with us:

Site Assessments & Customization: Our Brazil team will conduct on-site evaluations and co-design symbol sets tailored to your community.
“Board in a Box” Kits: Turnkey hardware bundles and step-by-step instructions to streamline installation.
Training & Support: Webinars, in-person workshops, and a Portuguese helpdesk to ensure boards are used effectively from day one.

Together, we can reimagine Brazil’s public spaces—so that every child and adult, regardless of speech ability, has the tools to communicate, connect, and belong.

Learn more here: https://pranchasdecomunicacao.com.br/