Blissymbolics, a comprehensive core communication system through which non-speaking people are able to communicate, has been developed and made available throughout Canada and the world by the Blissymbolics Communication Institute in Toronto, Canada. In addition, Canadian users of the system have become leaders in helping to increase universal awareness of the intellectual, social, emotional and communication needs of communicatively impaired and disadvantaged people.

Charles K. Bliss who was born in Australia and now resides in Australia, originally developed Blissymbolics between 1942 and 1965 as an international communication system to promote better understanding among people. The system was first successfully applied during the early 1970’s by a multidisciplinary group of specialists at the Ontario Crippled Children’s Centre in Toronto to cerebral palsied, school-aged, non-speaking children. This graphic and meaning-based system provided them with a means of more grammatically complete communication than picture or word boards.

Since its first application, Blissymbolics has been expanded to many other applications and populations. Today it is used as an augmentative communiation system with cognitive and language development programs to support reading and pre-reading activities. Its users include people who are retarded, multiply-handicapped, autistic, aphasic and stroke victims.

As experimentation and the use of Blissymbolics increased during the 1970’s, the need for training programs and instructional materials, for information about ongoing programs, for more symbols and for a structure to maintain a standard form of Blissymbols also grew. In order to meet and co-ordinate these requirements the Blissymbolics Communication Foundation was established in Toronto in 1975. The Foundation, through a licensing agreement with Mr. Bliss, obtained the exclusive mandate to co-ordinate the applications of Blissymbolics with non-speaking people around the world. Its mandate was to maintain symbol standards and to provide training and material for the increasing number of people applying the system with non-speaking people. The Foundation was re-named the Blissymbolics Communication Institute in 1978 to better represent its role as a central, co-ordinating educational organization.