Intermediate

Picture dictionary with opportunities to practise simple conversations

Designed for foreign language learners but useful resource for people with communication difficulties

Unit 1 is free

Type of exercises & brief description

• Semantic categorisation of 269 nouns (animals, body parts, clothing etc) and adjectives/descriptors (e.g. things that fly)
• 3 levels (easy, medium & hard). The easy level contains concrete categories, the medium level contains sub-categories, the hard level contains abstract categories
• 4 sets of exercise: Find, Classify, Exclude & Add one (i.e. find another item to fit the category)
• 10-50+ items can be selected per exercise
• The targets can be presented as pictures only, words only or words & pictures. Audio cues are provided
• A tutorial is provided to demonstrate how the app can be used

Error handling: None

Prompts/cues: None

Record results: Results are shown after the session with % of items named correctly. Results can be emailed to a designated address.

Comments/N.B

• There is only one version for UK, US, Aus and there are a few American words (e.g. cart, trunk)
• FREE TRIAL available through the Category Therapy Lite app

Supplier: Tactus

Design your own visual daily planners

Use photos, text and voice recordings

• break down an activity into steps (e.g. making tea)

• design an activity planner for each day

Useful if you forget how to do things or find it difficult to follow written instructions

Makes your text messages bigger & easier to read

Useful for people with aphasia who have some reading but struggle with the small font size of text messages on their phone

An AAC app. Click on a photo to speak out your message

Use your own photos and words, easy to customise

Create sentences in the message window. There are some customiseable settings

Slight delay between screens but this free app could be used for basic AAC needs or for testing potential for a more comprehensive AAC system

Speech recognition app

Speak your text or email messages instead of typing them

Could be used to replace typing/writing or used in conjunction. The person could type parts of a message and dictate other parts

Attach voice recordings to photos (recorded speech or text to speech) so the photo speaks out a message

When you press on a photo, the voice recording speaks out so you can explain your photos and use them in conversation if your speech is affected. You can also make stories to tell people/children.

You can also make visual schedulers to remind you how to carry out tasks (e.g. baking a cake)

You can make as many albums/stories as you like

For creating visual schedules, visual timers and symbol choices

Visual prompting tool only, no audio prompts or voice output

For designing visual schedules, story boards, flashcards etc.

Use your own photos and sound recordings or text to speech

AAC app using symbols, photos and keyboard with word prediction

Use ready made vocabularies or create/personalise your own

Uses text to speech voices

Promotes sentence construction

Alternative access modes: touch, switch, keyboard, native eye tracking, scanning

Available in English, French, Spanish and Dutch.

Available from Apple App store. Compatible with iPad, iPhone iOS 16 and apple watchOS 9 or later.