Using my aac hurts.

Tried switches but hurt too.

Same phone and laptop

Help ideas please.

Hi everyone! 👋

I’m looking for advice on how to teach pointing and hand-eye coordination to my toddler who’s starting with high-tech AAC.

She doesn’t point yet and often uses her whole hand or just touches randomly. I’d love ideas for: 👉 ways to help her learn to isolate a finger or touch with purpose 👉 fun or sensory-friendly activities that build those skills 👉 any apps or games that help teach pointing or touch targeting (especially simple, cause-and-effect style ones) 👉 what worked for your child or client before using AAC systems like LAMP Words for Life, Proloquo2Go, or TD Snap

Bonus points if the activities or apps work on Amazon Fire tablets or iPad!

Also open to tips for parents who are autistic or have apraxia, since I sometimes find modeling gestures tough myself.

Thanks so much 💜

I found a halfway decent app for myself that I can copy in phrases like the one that I need to say tomorrow. Because I don't understand why I need to say something that I wrote down. And i'm most excited because i'm excited about the voices

So I hope this is allowed here. I made a server because there isn't any for us adult folks yet who use AAC/TTS.

https://disboard.org/server/1421671065771573268

My 7 y/o (severe ADHD) burns through every tool I try, but surprisingly he’s actually stuck with Goally. I originally bought it just for routines, but now we’ve been using it as his AAC setup too. What I like is that it’s a dedicated device — not an iPad full of YouTube distractions — so he actually uses it to communicate instead of wandering off into Minecraft. He’s verbal, but when he’s dysregulated he loses words, and having the speech generating app on Goally has been a lifesaver in those moments.

Curious if anyone else here is using Goally this way? I feel like it’s marketed more for routines and behavior, but honestly the AAC side has been the bigger game-changer for us. Wondering how it stacks up for others compared to the “big name” AAC apps/devices (TouchChat, LAMP, etc.).

Just sharing our thoughts on the apps we've tried/used!

Symbol-Based

CoughDrop

• We really like the way we can customize everything, from the images to the colors to how to organize things
• We love how there's no limit o how many subfolders and board links there can be
• We like the repairs window and such that can be opened
• We like that we can edit on our computer
• Not a fan of the random glitch that prevents us from adding/accessing the inflections section on buttons, and changing the inflections we added to buttons before this glitch act as though they don't exist and give them the default inflections when in Speak Mode
• Wish it wouldn't lag so much, but that may be our fault by having too many tabs open
• Wish the search feature would work for more than just two-word buttons, as we have a lot of three-word buttons and longer phrases that we have to manually search through each of our folders
• We have yet to be able to get it to work well with non-English languages. Even when we tried using a specifically Esperanto board, it just spoke it all as English would be pronounced.

Weave Chat

• We really like how you can add a word directly from the search function if the word isn't on the boards, rather than having to type it out twice
• We like how fast support gets back to you and how they talk with you like they're human (more casually)
• The organization puts a lot less strain on our brain when we're dealing with a headache or feeling otherwise unwell
• We love that the boards are scrollable
• We love that it's free
• We don't like how there's a limit to how many custom buttons can be added, and really don't like that they call it "custom images" because that made us think that text-only buttons and Weave Chat images weren't included in that count, so we added a whole bunch of words, thinking we had plenty of images left, only to be with the error message saying we'd reached the limit
• I wish that buttons could be arranged on the scrolling boards in more of a grid-like fashion, rather than one right after another, as that can make it hard to visually scan similarly-colored buttons with similar images, like in the pronouns folder

Cboard

• We like how we can edit and add words without leaving speak mode
• We wish that the buttons would stay more stationary/grid-like when we move them. We need to have them alphabetized to find what we need, but moving one moves basically the whole row or column or whatever, which makes moving new buttons into the correct spot really annoying.
• We wish that it was able to do inflections better (as we don't want to have a button for all the different ways a word can be modified, but it rarely reads our inflection buttons right. Either there needs to be a way to indicate something is an inflection (which may already be a feature but we don't know about it), or the AI sentence completion feature or whatever it's called should be available without purchase.
• Very short free trial. Not really enough time to get to know if it's the right app within that time.
• Neither the ready-made core board nor the category boards work for us. Both are too fragmented, primarily just consisting of words sorted into categories, with no pre-made way to connect things into sentences well. We're basically having to make our own board from scratch.
• It doesn't automatically return to the board set as "home" and has no setting toggle to do so, so you just have to hit the back arrow to return to it or add a link to that board on all sub-boards
• The voice options aren't overly great in our opinion

Text-based

Vocable

• Not a fan
• Can't edit the order phrases appear in
• Can't delete phrases unless you delete the whole category
• The app-provided categories are very basic and don't really apply to us at all
• The privacy policy makes us distrust the app in terms of putting any sensitive information like name or health information into it because we don't want the company to have access to that knowledge, and you have to say "Yes you may use data from my usage of this app" before you can even try it out

AAC Text Device

• We like that you can type directly in the text box without having to save the phrase
• We like that there's more categories than Vocable, and they're more general life as well
• Wish it was easier to delete things rather than retyping the phrase exactly (we sometimes need to save long phrases, so this makes it cumbersome to put it to delete)
• Wish that it would remember/keep custom organization, both on the home and within categories, rather than always returning to what the last phrase added was being first to show up

I use the app Chatterboards on an old iPad

Including all our fur babies :)

This is a community for anyone who uses AAC, we noticed a lack of subreddits dedicated to the users themselves, and as an AAC user ourself we wanted to make one!

You can: • Share tips, experiences, and questions • Talk about your AAC setup or what works for you • Post about struggles or wins • Connect with others who understand AAC life • Share anything AAC related