Matthew, a 19-year-old with muscular dystrophy and autism, was boarding a school bus outside his East Hanover home on the morning of Feb. 10, 2023. It would be their last moment together.

Thankfully, there’s a simple language just for this purpose. It’s time to embrace the chord symbol. Your experience with chord symbols will likely be informed by the instrument that you play.

Children on the autism spectrum with minimal speech are generally provided with augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems that represent vocabulary using picture symbols (i.e., color ...