Saturday, March 1, 2014

Speak For Yourself

Last year at the Autism Society conference '13, I had a chance to meet up with Heidi and Renee, two of the creators behind the Speak for Yourself AAC app. They had some very interesting badges for us to put on our name-tags, as well as a chance to test out their app.  Both of them were thrilled to hear feedback and suggestions by autistic adults, and a couple of us were willing to discuss various topics about our experiences and communication.

First, I have to say, that I am not a regular AAC user; when I do lose verbal skills, I tend to grab pen and paper, if not a keyboard, and write.  Which is why I have the free version of Verbally, just in case, on my iPad.  The paid in-app upgrade, $99.99,  lets you save words and phrases, as well as upgraded voices.  I like the app because I can type out what I want to say.

Speak for Yourself, on the other hand, is a more traditional AAC; that is, it is a picture and word (PECs?) based AAC.  The full version is $199.99 , but there is a free version for testing out, which is what I have.   I can't speak for the usability of the app, being that I'm not a regular user.  However, reviews have pointed out that Speak for Yourself has features such as no repeating words, words that stay at the same place every time, and the ability to customize it.

The full app comes with a qwerty keyboard and the ability to customize words.  Any type of word, and the app voice is capable of speaking adult words.  At the conference, this was something that other adults and I discussed with the developers, the ability for self-expression and for the app to grow with a person.  The developers heartily agreed with us, and even showed us how to program the app to include swear words.

While I doubt that those words are included in the immediate vocabulary, it is good to know that they are not censored from the app, so adults can fully customize the words (and I believe the pictures) to suit their needs.

For these reasons, I highly recommend the Speak for Yourself and Verbally apps for adult autistics.  

6 comments:

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  5. Thank you Addison, for the recommendation. However, I don't appreciate spamming. So while I'll look into the app suggested, I am going to have to delete the related posts made, under my comments guidelines.

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  6. As a sign of gratitude for how my son was saved from autism, i decided to reach out to those still suffering from this.
    My son suffered autism in the year 2013 and it was really tough and heartbreaking for me because he was my all and the symptoms were terrible, he always have difficulty with communication, , and he always complain of poor eye contact . we tried various therapies prescribed by our neurologist but none could cure him. I searched for a cure and i saw a testimony by someone who was cured and so many other with similar body problem, and he left the contact of the doctor who had the cure to autism . I never imagined autism has a natural cure not until i contacted him and he assured me my son will be fine. I got the herbal medication he recommended and my son used it and in one months time he was fully okay even up till this moment he is so full of life.autism has a cure and it is a herbal cure contact the doctor for more info on drwilliams098675@gmail.com on how to get the medication. Thanks for reading my testimony .

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