After hearing a little buzz about Therapy Box's new AAC app, Chatable, I was excited to get a chance to try it out this month. It has some nifty features that give it a lot of potential for our AAC users.

Features I like:

• There is an integration of grid based pages and scene based pages. You can choose one or the other or make a hybrid page with both. I found the modification to be easy and user friendly.
• Users can create messages and share these by speaking, posting to text messages, Facebook, Twitter or through email. I love that this company gets the importance of these social options!
• Multimedia options include the ability to add your own photos, link to your own videos, link to YouTube videos, link to websites or play your own music within the app.
• Scanning features: touch anywhere or switch scanning; auditory cues; scan color options
• Text to Speech or Handwriting Input- an unusual input method that gives users who can write the ability to speak outloud
• Navigation by folders, hotspot selection on scenes or by left-right swiping.
• Schedule the appearance of boards by setting a time to have the board open- a nice feature to cue AAC users and assist in navigation
• Set a specific page to open when the AAC user arrives at a designated place (recognized by GPS).

Wish List:

• An organized set of vocabulary and messaging options to help families get started
• Customizable auditory cues and linear scanning options for scanning
• Qwerty keyboard option
• Slightly larger navigation buttons to the keyboard and back for ease of access
• An option to automatically open scheduled pages without requiring a yes/no response

All in all Chatable is an AAC app with robust options. A great place to start with AAC and, with the help of an SLP to develop a relevant vocabulary set, a system which can meet the needs of many beginning communicators.

I was given a copy of Chatable to review. We are given access to many AAC apps but only discuss ones we believe have therapeutic value for our families.

Features video from Therapy Box

http://youtu.be/kNSGQHlJp0w

The first text-2-speech app on our blog, Predictable is the Bomb! (for you Brits, that means I like it a lot:) I love the features of this app. Direct selection, scanning with switch and scanning by touchscreen. Users have a traditional keyboard with solid word prediction (hence the name, I'm guessing!) and a "dyslexia setting" that predicts words that are misspelled. What a great feature! More to come on this subject after I test it out with my favorite patient with dyslexia.

Predictable also includes additional messaging options. You can copy and paste your messages from the app. An added bonus for us social media fans: simple access to Twitter, Facebook and texting (and email if that's how you roll).. I just tweeted my first tweet from Predictable and had a "favorite" in less than 30 seconds. Clearly a good interface.

The traditional feature of this app are slick as well. Access methods include direct selection, scanning with switch and scanning by touchscreen. Messaging options include the keyboard and word prediction, of course, but also user modifiable stored phrases to increase rate of communication. There is a history feature so users can quickly access frequently constructed messages as well.

A very solid AAC app for our spelling friends!

Vicki

Disclosure: DTA is a resource center for Therapy Box Apps as well as a variety of other AAC app developers and device manufacturers. We have long term loans for dedicated devices and professional AAC apps donated to our clinic for patient trials.

I had the opportunity to meet Sam Sennott at ATIA the very first year he co-introduced Proloquo2Go to the world. At that time the app was available on the only mobile device we had, the iPhone. One of our therapists at the time, Adina Bradshaw, had a patient, Ryan, whose mother had heard about it and had one of the first versions available. The exciting thing about that first look at Proloquo2Go was that it was the first AAC app I had seen that had a comprehensive vocabulary system. I was truly shocked that someone had created an app that had potential to be used as a "full service" communication solution. Up to this point all the "AAC apps" were glorified choice boards. This app had pragmatic and context based organization, a categorical dictionary, social messaging options, a keyboard and word prediction. Over the years updates have included a core word page set, the ability to save and share over the internet and enhanced customization options.



Proloquo2Go remains a standard in the AAC app world with good reason. It has the tools you need to create a highly customized communication app for your individual child. Users can add personal photos easily. You can rearrange vocabulary, hide buttons, color code and, change the number of buttons on each page to simplify for difficult concepts.



TIPS: There is a bit of a learning curve when you want to move beyond basic modifications on Proloquo2Go. Each page is actually 2 pages plus a storage page. You can elect to have buttons live on either one of the two "live" pages (primary or secondary) or you can save the button for later use in the "storage" page. This is a very unique method of arranging buttons. The system is handy when you want to add new vocabulary from your storage or, when you want to highlight certain words by moving them onto the first page of the set. It is so unique though, it wasn't immediately obvious to me on my first attempt at customization.



The other less than obvious tip to know about Proloqou2Go is that you can manage the appearance of each page through the "folders" tab on the edit page. In this tab you can decide how many columns you want on that specific page. By selecting "make default view" you can have that number of columns appear regardless of the default number of buttons which appears on the other pages. You can also modify pages with different number of columns in advance so that you can start teaching concepts with a few buttons per page but then easily advance to more buttons without sacrificing your modifications.



You can also place buttons on specific locations on a page by setting "element order" to "free positioning" on the folders tab. This option lets you put buttons where you want, group buttons and put spaces in between to ease the visual scanning demands for your child.



There are many other tips and tools for Proloqou2Go that you can access here:

http://www.assistiveware.com/product/proloquo2go/resources



All in all Proloquo2Go remains an excellent app for comprehensive communication for users who are comfortable with a grid based system. Like most of the good AAC apps, the quality really depends on the amount of time and effort you expend in learning the flexible features and understanding the organization of the vocabulary. As always, partners speaking AAC to their kids are the critical component to success. This is an app that gives you all the words you need to interact effectively. Even after a few years and many competing products, Proloquo2Go remains in our top 5 AAC app choices.



Sam Sennott blogs here with some helpful info and resources:

http://www.alltogetherwecan.com

Disclosure: DTA is a resource center for sharing Proloqou2Go and Proloquo4Text as well as a variety of other AAC app developer and device manufacturers. We have long term loans for dedicated devices and professional AAC apps donated to our clinic for patient trials.




Vicki Clarke

Compass comes with its own research based core word pages but also gives families and professionals the option of using either Gateway or WordPower for sentence building (core word strategy).  The Compass Core Word set is a little harder for us to get used to, primarily because it is presented in a different format than the traditional Gateway and WordPower we've seen for many years.  I did a little reading and asking around and found that there is a lot of research out there about the need for core word instruction but not so much about HOW we're supposed to do it.  I am curious how the strategy in Compass works for our patients.  The hardest part about this particular method of displaying core words is simply that there are no visual cues for word meaning, category or order in a sentence.  Is that bad?  I'm not sure, but as a therapist I depend on using visual cues to teach, so I'm struggling a bit with this format.  For now, I'm defaulting back to my comfort zone with WordPower and Gateway but I'm not writing off the new Core format quite yet.

The best feature of Compass is the seamless interaction of visual scene/grid context based messages with quick phrases and control messages. Users can have pictures of their own kitchens, bedrooms and cars with their own personally developed messages- you know those phrases you use ALL the time but which don't exist on any word list?  This programmable feature gives users a plethora of visual cues which decreases the learning curve for most of our patients.   Need to talk in your kitchen?  Touch the photo of your own kitchen, touch the refrigerator photo and ask, "Who drank all the milk???"  Don't have "milk" on your kitchen page, touch the button for "topic words," select "favorite drinks" and you'll find your milk, Coke, juice, and (since we are in Georgia) sweet tea!  And if you want to put together a creative sentence, touch the "Core Word" button on your toolbar and navigate quickly to the Core Word Pageset of  your choice and select your words:  "Jackson" + "did" + "it" + "!"  

Compass is easily the most comprehensive selection of communication methods seamlessly combined into one page set.   This programming is our go-to choice for patients who communicate best using whole phrases based on their environment, who need to develop their language through sentence building and single word comprehension and who need visual supports to help them navigate their day. Not the fastest core word strategy on the market but hands down the best visual supports available for language.

Vicki Clarke

Disclosure: DTA is a high volume AAC evaluation center. As such we have long term loans for dedicated speech generating devices and professional AAC apps donated to our clinic for patient trials.