What is a "visual aid?"

A visual aid refers to something that helps you to get your message across. Visual aids include things such as: leaflets; posters; charts and diagrams; overhead slide projectors; whiteboards; flip charts; models; PowerPoint, etc.

Visual aids are useful in presentations. They can help to make your message easier to understand, and they can add to the points you are making. You can use visual aids to do the following:

• Provide pictures of what you’re talking about
• Summarise the points you’re making
• Simplify complicated ideas
• Present additional information, etc.

Visual aids help the audience to remember what you’re talking about. A spoken communication stimulates the sense of hearing. A spoken communication with visual aids stimulates two senses – seeing and hearing.

This makes it easier to understand and easier to remember – and more interesting too!

Different forms of visual aids work in different ways.