72 Free & Lite Versions of AAC Apps

June 17, 2012 by Carole Zangari - Leave your thoughts

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There is a more recent version of this post and app list.

Click HERE for the updated version.

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Here is our most recent update of free and lite versions of AAC apps, including a dozen for the Android platform. As with the previous version, we’re including some additional resources and excerpts from previous posts related to AAC app selection. We’d also like to give a mention to the first draft of RELAAACs, our attempt to quantify some of what we look for when we try to compare AAC apps based on their language and communication features.

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Thanks to all who’ve given us great feedback and suggestions on our list of free and lite AAC apps. If you’ve been following our blog, you know that we have mixed feelings about the AAC app revolution. More specifically, we’ve had concerns about the decision-making process around app selection, and have advocated for that to occur within the context of a feature match process that gives appropriate attention to the full range of AAC options.

In our digital curation sites, we link to tools we use for this process, such as the feature match forms developed by Jessica Gosnell at Boston Children’s and the ones created by Scott Marfilius and Kelly Fonner. In our own teaching and clinical work, when AAC apps are being considered, we’re beginning to use a supplemental rubric that focuses more specifically on the language aspects of the app using this working draft. That is still in the preliminary stages, but we are happy to share the initial draft.

Because this list sometimes gets circulated without the context in which it was originally developed, we decided to include some previous posts, resources, and comments related to this topic.

1. Our post on 5 Things to Do Before you Choose an AAC App
2. Comprehensive AAC app list for iPhone and iPad by Jane Farrall
3. Scoop.It collection and Pinterest boards with AAC app sites and videos
4. OCALI’s listing of apps for individuals with ASD
5. Tech Connect’s Apps Assistant
6. The App Academy’s site for app training videos

And, finally, some excerpts from our original post:

Graduate student SLPs are a fairly diverse group, but one thing that is common to almost all of them is that they are on a very limited budget. Although many of the AAC apps are reasonably priced, even that can be a lot for a struggling student. We wanted to put together a list of the free or lite versions of AAC apps for them to explore on their own iDevices.

First, a few caveats:
1. Selection of AAC tools is always made after a thorough assessment. This is as true for apps as it is for SGDs.
2. This list isn’t intended in any way to endorse these apps or suggest that the free/lite version is sufficient. Hopefully, it will give future professionals a taste of what these apps can do and allow them to begin to think about how to make decisions about this in the context of a feature match assessment. Review sites like the one at Spectronics and OCALI can be very useful when you are trying to see some of the features that apps contain.
3. This list isn’t comprehensive. If you have links to other AAC apps that are free or have lite versions, please send them along and we will update our list.
4. Students, remember what we’ve taught you about AAC. This doesn’t supersede what you’ve learned about AAC and language assessment, symbol selection, multimodal communication, etc.

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iDevice Free or Lite AAC Apps