Daily Communication

This is the heart of AcademicVoice: a student building and speaking messages. No PIN is needed for everyday communication - the board is always open to the student.

Badges: School · Pro · Clinician (no badge = all editions).

1. The board

The main screen is the student's communication board - a grid of word and picture cells, organized into folders and categories.

• Tap a cell to choose that word.
• Folders open to more words; a Back tile returns to the previous board.
• The category pills and top folder row help move between groups of words. (You can hide these per student in Settings → Board Visibility if they're distracting - see chapter 05.)

2. The sentence strip

By default, tapping cells adds words to the sentence strip along the top, so the student can build a phrase before speaking.

1. Tap words to add them to the strip.
2. Tap Speak to say the whole strip out loud.
3. Clear the strip to start a new message.

3. Speaking one word at a time (Direct-Speak)

Some students do better speaking each word as they tap it, with no strip to build.

1. Open Settings → Direct-Speak Mode.
2. Turn it on for this student.

Now each tap speaks immediately. This is a per-student choice, so one student can build sentences while another speaks word-by-word on the same iPad.

4. Switching students

Tap the student circle (the small colored circle with the student's initial, near the top of the board) to change students. The app asks for a staff PIN every time - that's deliberate, so a student can never wander into another student's board or records. Once you approve the switch, the board, vocabulary, progress, and access settings (including eye-gaze calibration) all change with the student.

If you use a switch or auditory scanning, the student circle is part of the top navigation scan - it announces "Switch student" with the current student's name.

5. Emergency and core words

Six emergency words are always on the board - the red SOS HELP button plus STOP, PAIN, BATHROOM, NO, and SICK. They appear in every mode, during lessons and assessments, and they cannot be hidden or turned off - a student can always call for help. Tapping SOS HELP speaks immediately and opens the full emergency panel with the same words at full size.

Core communication words also stay available to the student at all times - a student can always say yes/no or use their essential vocabulary. In Settings → Board Visibility you can show or hide the top folder row and the category pills; the emergency words are not part of that setting and always stay visible.

Tips

• Everyday communication never asks for a PIN.
• If the board looks too full for a student, chapter 04 (low vision) and Settings → Cell Layout and Board Visibility let you simplify what's shown.
• Speaking voice and speak-on-tap are set in Settings → Voice & Speech.