Seeing Does Not Mean Understanding — w@lter<br>In short<br>A sign does not communicate because it exists: it communicates when its meaning arrives, stays clear, and lets someone act.

In short<br>A sign does not communicate because it exists: it communicates when its meaning arrives, stays clear, and lets someone act.

Informing Is Not the Same as Communicating

There is a subtle but decisive difference between informing and communicating .

Information can exist on its own. It is a datum, a signal, a trace, an organized form that contains something.

A number on a screen. An icon in an interface. A word written on a sign. A color associated with a state.

Long before digital interfaces, humans were already looking for ways to make meaning travel through visible forms. Cave paintings, hieroglyphs, ritual or public symbols already had this role: communicating something in a simple, recognizable way, often without relying on writing as we understand it today.

They were not “icons” in the modern sense, but they faced the same problem: making meaning legible to someone else.

Horse in the Lascaux caves. Image from Wikimedia Commons, public domain.<br>Egyptian hieroglyphs at the British Museum. Photo by Jon Sullivan from Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

All of this can be correct, visible, orderly.

And still fail to communicate.

To inform is to produce a sign. To communicate is to make meaning arrive.

Communication only begins when that information crosses a distance.

For me, this reflection did not begin only in front of an interface.

It also began by watching Lisa.

Lisa needs AAC , Augmentative and Alternative Communication. It means using tools, gestures, images, symbols, boards, devices, or apps to support or replace spoken language when speech is not enough, does not arrive, or is not available.

When someone communicates through a pictogram, the problem of meaning stops being theoretical.

That sign has to carry the weight of a need, a choice, a desire. It has to be clear enough to let someone say something about themselves.

want

drink

help

Simplified AAC sequence: pictograms become possible words, choices, needs.Pictograms: Sergio Palao / ARASAAC, property of the Government of Aragon, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. arasaac.org<br>I wrote more directly about Lisa and her diagnosis in the post about ADNP syndrome. Here I start from there, but try to widen the lens: what happens when we treat every sign as a small act of access?

The Distance Between Intention and Understanding

That distance is not only physical. It is the distance between:

the person designing and the person interpreting

the person who already knows and the person seeing it for the first time

a technical context and a human context

an intention and real understanding

In between, there is not emptiness. There is the most interesting problem: the transfer of meaning .

Intention<br>what I want to make possible<br>Sign<br>the visible form chosen<br>Context<br>where and when it appears<br>Interpretation<br>the meaning reconstructed<br>Action<br>what the person can do

Meaning does not live in one point: it has to cross the whole chain without losing clarity.<br>Communication works when this chain remains legible all the way through.

If it breaks at any point, the information can be correct and still fail to arrive. It can be elegant and still not be understood. It can be technically coherent and still fail the moment it is read by someone different from the person it was imagined for.

Why Interfaces Make the Problem Visible

This happens constantly in interfaces.

An icon feels obvious to the person who chose it because it lives inside a history: a habit, a visual culture, an operating system, an age, a profession.

But that same icon can become ambiguous for someone who does not share that background.

The problem is not only aesthetic. It is cognitive.

Every sign carries a load. Some signs are almost transparent: they show what they mean. Others are conventions: they work because we learned them. Others survive as cultural fossils, continuing to indicate an action even when the object they came from has disappeared from everyday experience.

Type of sign<br>How it works<br>Risk

Transparent<br>it resembles what it points to<br>it feels universal, but is not always universal

Conventional<br>it works because it has been learned<br>it excludes people who do not know the convention

Cultural fossil<br>it comes from past objects or habits<br>it loses meaning as generations change

Contextual<br>it depends on where it appears<br>its meaning shifts when the flow or environment changes

Transparent<br>shows what it means

Conventional<br>works because it was learned

Cultural fossil<br>comes from past objects

Contextual<br>changes with the flow

The floppy disk for saving. The magnifying glass for search. The trash can for deletion. The heart for appreciation. The bell for notifications.

They are useful signs, as long as their meaning remains shared.

What Semiotics, AAC, and Accessibility Tell Us

This idea has...