Basic

Work on answering questions with help

Questions on current affairs, updated weekly

Work on asking questions and social phrases

Work on people’s names with video and spelling practice

Spelling with sounds

Letter spelling

Rhyme judgement

Reading tasks

Matching tasks

Sentence processing (e.g reversible sentence ordering)

Written & spoken sentence building

Semantic associations

Tasks for working on verbs in a sentence context

Conversation starters

Articulation: 5000+ videos of target words and phrases, including breakdown into individual syllables & phonemes

Features a communication props drawer with maps, drawing board, numbers, time 

Multiple ways to create hierarchies (e.g. according to word length, sound, frequency, number of phonemes)

Video tutorials are provided to demonstrate how the app works & each exercise has its own tutorial to demonstrate how to complete the exercises

Can create multiple therapy sessions and can share sessions over internet

Error handling: Wrong answers are removed; the response is read aloud for the user to judge;  contextual information is given

Prompts/cues: Closure cues; spoken word

Record results: Results are shown after the session with % of items completed correctly. Can request additional details about accuracy, speed and help requested. Results can also be emailed to the clinician.

Option to break up sentence level questions into chunks to support reading and listening

Comments:  

• Can choose option for items to remain on the screen until the user moves onto the next exercise (i.e. no automatic scrolling onto the next item).  This is useful when used in therapy to discuss the user’s response
• Advanced settings for SLT to designate exercise features for each exercise set
• Remote management/allocation of exercises and results

Free version, monthly subscription option, 1 & 3 year subscription options

7 vocabulary sets are provided:

4 Basic: 4 cell basic vocabulary set

Communication Journey Aphasia: 12 cell  vocabulary set with adult & aphasia orientated vocab

MyCore: 108 cell categorised word bank for those with some literacy & good cognition & semantics

Spelling: 40 cell QWERTY keyboard with word prediction & phrase bank

VocabPC: 12 cell vocab set with activity vocab, category based vocab, carrier phrases

Multichat:15 cell vocab set in 3 versions: adult, adolescent, student. Contains activity vocab, category based vocab, questions & keyboard with word prediction

My Quickchat: 4, 8 & 12 cell layouts designed for AAC users. Adult & child versions available for each layout

3 versions available: Lite, full & full version with WordPower. Lite version doesn't speak & personalised pictures cannot be added - it's for evaluation purposes & couldn't really be used as a communication support

Other features:

Can be personalised with user's vocab & phrases. Pre-progammed vocab is American (e.g. purse for handbag)

User's photos can be used in place of symbols

Can use recorded or synthesised speech.  UK voices can be downloaded

Easy & intuitive to program

Word prediction on the keyboard is not the best available

Supplier: Tactus

Type of exercises & brief description:

Photos of nouns are presented for confrontation, verbal naming.  There are 20 items in each exercise set and a total of 10 exercise sets which must be purchased individually

Speech recognition software is used to assess whether the spoken attempt was correct

Prompts/cues:

If the first attempt isn’t recognised, an initial, written letter is provided. If the second attempt isn’t recognised, the word is spoken and written and the user moves to the next item automatically

Record results:

Results are shown at the end of the session. In order to receive results, the professional license must be purchased

Comments:

•  It is difficult to identify what some of the photographs are of
• The items are always presented in the same order
• Not all regional accents or dysarthric speech are recognised. 

Adult appropriate, photo based AAC app. Easy to edit and add own vocabulary. Favourites & history links so the user can readily find a message they recently constructed.

Immediate access to Yes/No messages and to a body chart with a pain scale.

When an item is selected, it moves into the message window where it appears only as text.  For someone with no reading this could be frustrating and difficult to use.

3 high street scenarios are offered (sweet shop, pizza restaurant & a jewellery shop) where the user must order what they are told to via the auditory instruction

Up to 5 levels with increasing number of items & modifiers and also temporal directions. Includes an option to include background noise & adjust the volume of the environmental noise

Designed for children and very American voice . The reward activities can be turned off. However it may be useful for users wishing to work on listening tasks with added levels of distraction

Error handling: none

Prompts/cues: none

Record results: results can be accessed within the app by activity or by date

Personalised word lists for spelling practise

Create your own, personalised spelling lists & record the associated spoken word

2 functions:

Spell to dictation

Unscramble anagrams (spoken word also provided)

Results are recorded & errors are highlighted. Can select to correct errors at the end of each exercise

Results can be emailed

No prompts or cues

3 exercise sets:

• sequences (automatic speech such as ABC, alphabet)
• 1-6 word phrases (7 levels)
• 2-5 syllable words (4 levels)
• 175 exercises in total

The words/phrases are of a functional nature, useful for conversation

Rate of speech can be altered

Visual (video & text) and auditory (spoken) cues given

5 stepped approach to verbal production (listen/tap rhythm/say with model/say with model fading out/say with verbal but no auditory model)

Items can be presented in stepped order of difficulty or randomised

User needs good self-monitoring skills to be able to self-rate whether they got the response correct

Self-ratings and audio recordings can be emailed to SLT

NB audio recordings are with an American accent

A free trial is available through Apraxia Therapy Lite app

Supplier: Tactus

Exercises for following written and spoken multi-step instructions with 100 stimuli items

Choose from 2-6 information carrying words

Features worked on include size, colour, before, after, first, then

There are preliminary exercises to check the person has understood all the concepts, before moving onto the full exercises

Results can be emailed or consulted in-app

No prompts/cues are provided