Orkid Ideas

We're Clare and Deborah - the Orkid Ideas team. Clare's son Tomas is an intelligent, funny and charming young man who loves trains, Switzerland and football and was diagnosed with autism, a language disorder and sensory difficulties at 4 years old. Visual supports played a large part in helping Tomas to cope with everyday life from a young age and Clare spent many late nights laboriously making her own to help develop Tomas’s understanding and communication, giving him a voice and having a positive effect on his behaviour.

On one of those late nights, Clare came upon the idea of colour-coded school kit lists that could be clipped to each of her children’s school bags. They quickly learned to start organising their own things for school and Deborah loved the independence it gave her children when they tried the idea too. Encouraged by demand for the kit lists from other parents, we ventured into the unknown and began to develop the product that eventually became ‘TomTag – the cool tool that helps kids pack their bag for school’ - of course, it seemed only right to name it after Tomas.

TomTag really began to flourish when we teamed up with Widgit symbols (a well-regarded international symbol system) and began to offer kits for a much wider range of needs, unlocking TomTag’s potential to be a truly versatile visual support tool. Our mission and drive is to help and support any child, young person or adult who could benefit from using visual supports, just as Tomas himself has done.