Cost, privacy, platforms, and what happens to your board.
Questions
Frequently asked.
Is it actually free, or free-with-a-catch?
Free, full stop. There's no subscription tier, no
paywalled voice, and no ads. Every feature described above is available
with the app as installed.
Does it work without an internet connection?
Yes — speech, the board, sentence building, and word
suggestions all run entirely on-device. An internet connection is only
used if you choose to search online symbol libraries while adding a tile
— and even that can be made offline by downloading the picture
symbols once from Settings.
Can a school or classroom use it?
Yes. One device can hold a separate profile for each
student — their own board, voice, settings, and usage log, kept
entirely apart from each other. Switching between them lives in Settings,
behind the caregiver PIN, so a student can't switch away from their own
words. Profiles are off by default, so a device serving one person never
has to think about them.
What if the person can read and write?
Turn on Type to Speak and they get a keyboard that
speaks in their own voice, with the phrases they save one tap away and
matching phrases surfacing as they type. It can replace the picture board
completely for that profile — for someone who lost speech as an
adult, after a stroke or with ALS, a grid of picture symbols is usually
the wrong tool.
What happens to the usage data and word suggestions?
They're computed and stored entirely on the device from
real taps — never sent anywhere. You can reset the usage log or export a
report at any time from the Word Usage screen. See the
Privacy Policy
for the full picture.
What platforms does it run on?
Both. It's on
Google Play
for Android phones and tablets, and on the
App Store
for iPhone and iPad, in English and Spanish.
Is there an iPhone or iPad version?
Yes — it's on the
App Store
now, for iPhone and iPad.
It took a while to commit to, and it's worth saying why. Apple charges
$99 a year to publish, every year, for as long as the app stays up
— against Google's one-time $25. For a free app with no revenue
that is a real cost, and not one you can stop paying. If the membership
ever lapses the app is pulled, and an AAC app quietly disappearing is
worse than one that never shipped, because by then somebody's child is
using it to talk.
iPad is where a lot of AAC happens, so it was worth doing anyway.