4:01pm Friday 6th June 2008
A COUPLE of budding entrepreneurs from Hereford have come up with a way of helping tourists overcome the language barrier when holidaying abroad.
Incommunicardo is the brainchild of Hunderton couple Stuart Littlehales and Julie Hutcheson, who have devised a standard pack of playing cards with almost 300 pictures and symbols depicting what a tourist may want.
The cards illustrate anything from describing how hot you want your curry, to asking for help in finding a doctor.
"The cards have themes relating to transport, accommodation, food, recreation, shopping, health and emergency situations," said Mr Littlehales, a dentist with Herefordshire Primary Care Trust.
"We've all heard the saying 'a picture paints a thousand words', which is useful when you consider there are more than 6,900 spoken languages in the world."
The idea came following a holiday taken by the couple along the Danube cycle path last summer, when they found virtually no English was spoken.
"We went into restaurants and just didn't have a clue what was on the menus," said Ms Hutcheson, Incommunicardo's director and an IT teacher who is part of the Royal National College for the Blind's teaching bank.
"People have this expectation that everyone will speak English when they go abroad, which isn't true."
She added that with airports cutting back on luggage allowances, the cards are an ideal size to be packed in hand luggage and used as playing cards.
Incommunicardowas developed following discussions with Business Link and a three-day course hosted by city company Riverside Training, based in St Martin's Street, Hereford.
Mr Littlehales said the cards will be made locally to "keep our carbon footprint small and to support local business communities".
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