One Voice
OneVoice by Legend is an app that turns the iPad or iPhone into an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) device. It comes with a pre-populated vocabulary (focused on children), but you can also customize it by adding your own phrases and photos. Watch the Intro video below to see how it works and hear some of the available voices. Other videos that show you how to use the app are available on the developer’s website.
There is a helpful review of One Voice on the Autism Epicenter website, highlighting its features and potential for individuals with autism.
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later.
Posted in AAC and Autism and Communication & Social Skills. 1 comment
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Erin Sheldon made the following comment about this app on the QIAT listserve on 9/22/11:
” We use the app OneVoice for my 8 year old daughter with Angelman Syndrome. The beauty of OneVoice is simplicity. The categories are all always available rather than having to dig through one page to get to the next to the next. Pages can’t be linked the way they are in Proloquo2Go but it also means Maggie doesn’t get lost in the pages and just exit out. OneVoice is asthetically more attractive and comes with a set of realistic looking illustrations rather than Boardmaker-style symbols. It looks fun and approachable rather than “looking” like a Dynavox, which can be an advantage if the person has negative connotations with AAC from the past. You can import pictures and its a universal app for iPhone/iPad/iPod. For my own daughter and a few other kids we know, they just find OneVoice much more motivating. You can decide whether to play each word as the icon is pressed or wait until the person presses “speak” to read the whole sentence.
For someone with more basic communication needs, and it to inspire more commentary, it might be worth looking at. You can also pull up a keyboard and type sentences. We mostly import photographs. My daughter had never used an AAC successfully even just to request things like “more”, but with OneVoice, her first sentence was “I like I like I love Justin Bieber”. We have categories to support each subject area at school, friends and family (and asking questions or making statements specific to that category, like the friend category has photos of her best friends along with icons for “lets have a sleepover”, “I miss”, “I like”, “I love”, “where is?” etc.) Its been a great app and the first one to motivate my daughter to initiate using it. Because its universal, the job coach can model use of it on an iPod touch or iPhone.
Its just a very intuitive app and our favourite of all the ones we trialed.”