The Power of Speech

How can you make clear what you want, if you cannot speak, read or write? What if pointing things out or grabbing what you want is impossible too?
These are daily question for us and the team at school, working with our daughter Veere. It's a beautiful quest, wich demands the utmost of her and us. You start to enter the World of AAC, Augmentative and Alternative Communication.
At the moment she works with a Tellus Smart computer at school and at home. It's her third type of device (after the dynamo and the M3). The Tellus works with MindExpress CE software. It works, but we think the software is out of date.
It's a lot of work building the boards, adding custom pictures or photo's is difficult.
It only works on Windows machines for backing up or building, wich makes Mac users forced to buy Windows.
We were looking for an alternative so started to search the internet and the iTunes app store for AAC software and found
 MyTalkTools to fulfill our needs. It works on the  iPhone, the iPod Touch and the iPad. Personally I find the idea of the app and the supporting online workspace great. The app is pretty young and still developing, but the builders done a tremendous lot in the past year. The concept comes from a father wanting to use the iPhone as an AAC device for his son.

One of the best features of MyTalkTools is the online Workspace wich provides a board making tool and back-up of the last board available, just by login in at any internet connection.
So if you're device gets broken, stolen or lost, you can easily access the work done on the workspace and use it for the new device.
Another great thing is that you can have your boards work on more than one devices. So if your iPad is out of power or you (or your dad) forgot to take it, you can use Moms or Dads iPhone as an AAC device with your own personal boards.
Adding new boards and filling it with content like text, images or photo's is very easy.
The MyTalkMobile AAC can operate standalone and can be bought in the iTunes App Store. It works on the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.
To use the MyTalkTools Workspace you need to pay a separate service yearly.
But my experience is that the total cost is extremely lower than the standard products offered through health ensurance.
As far as I know MyTalk isn't covered by Dutch health ensurance (yet).

I will try to post some films of my daughter using MyTalk in action. So more in the near future

Thanks MyTalk!

Best wishes,

Sander Yzerman

from the Netherlands