Our Story

I'm Jeffrey Davis, PhD, ATP — an assistive technology specialist. For about twenty years I've worked with students who communicate differently — in public school classrooms, as a private homeschool provider, in hospital homebound programs, and as a tutor. Over that time I've watched AAC move from low tech to mid tech to high tech, and I've put every generation of it in front of real students.

The high-tech devices got very good at helping a student say "I want juice." What they never did was help that same student answer a question about photosynthesis on Tuesday, when the rest of the class was answering it too.

The gap I kept seeing

A student on an AAC device is usually several steps behind the lesson, not because of the student, but because someone has to program this week's vocabulary into the device before it can be used. That someone is a teacher, a speech-language pathologist, or a paraprofessional, doing it after hours, student by student, week by week.

It doesn't have to work that way. Academic standards are public. Every state publishes what a fourth grader is expected to learn in science. The words a student needs to participate in that lesson are knowable in advance — so they should already be there when the lesson starts.

Some students follow an adapted curriculum, and their content genuinely needs individual attention. But many students using AAC are in general education, working on the same standards as everyone else. They shouldn't have to wait for the words to catch up.

Why we built AcademicVoice

AcademicVoice is a communication app built around academic content. Its vocabulary is organized by grade and subject and aligned to publicly available standards, so a student can participate in the lesson that's actually happening. It includes adapted assessments and alternative ways of presenting material, because those are the things that take the most staff time to build by hand — and they're usually needed for one student at a time.

The people this is for

We built AcademicVoice for students first. But we also built it for the teachers, SLPs, and support staff who spend their evenings programming devices, adapting quizzes, and reformatting materials so one student can take part. Special education loses good people to that kind of exhaustion. If a tool can give some of that time back, it should.

This app was a labor of love. It came from watching students wait, watching staff burn out, and deciding that determination plus a real appreciation for efficiency could do something about both.

— Jeffrey Davis, PhD, ATP
Assistive Technology Evaluations and Services, LLC (DBA EquaAccess)