TapToTalk and iTaalk Team Up to Help Non-Verbal Kids

The iTaalk Autism Foundation awards grants for iPads for individuals aged 0-22 with a diagnosis of autism. We are delighted to announce that TapToTalk is partnering with iTaalk so non-verbal and partially-verbal grant recipients can get started right away with TapToTalk, the most popular, most customizable AAC app.

Kids who are awarded iTaalk grants for iPads and need AAC will now also receive free three-month subscriptions to TapToTalk Designer.

TapToTalk's motto is, "Give your child a voice." iTaalk's is, "Giving children with autism a voice...one iPad at a time." So together we're giving children with autism a voice, one iPad at a time.

For more information about the iTaalk iPad grant program and application process, click here.

7 Tips for your Halloween TapToTalk Album

Help make Halloween more fun by adding a Halloween album to your child's TapToTalk. That's what a lot of our users tell us they do. Here are the ideas for this we've heard most often:

A picture of a jack-o-lantern that says, "Trick or Treat!" A picture that says, "Thank You" (use the one you already use for this, but put it right in the Halloween album) A picture of a ghost that says a real scary, "Boo!" A picture of a witch that cackles A picture of your child in his or her costume that says, "I'm a ______" A picture that says, "That's a cool costume" Use Google or Bing image search to find great Halloween pictures to use (we also have a few in the Holidays category of the Designer library)

And here is a bonus tip from TapToTalk Mom Becky Brown: "We made a Halloween album too! Most people were interested in seeing (my daughter) communicate this way, plus they gave her extra candy. We personalized hers with some doggy friend names, so she could say hi to them too."

Make this a fun activity. Let your child help pick the pictures, and have fun recording the sounds.

Store Reusable AAC Templates in Your Album Library

If you are a TapToTalk Designer Pro or Agency user, you have a powerful feature that lets you build templates, standard designs or best practices into AAC albums. It's called the User Album Library.

Once an album is saved in your Album Library, it can be copied to any of your TapToTalks, and then the copy can be modified to meet the unique needs of the individual child.

You can design albums right in the Album Library or, even more easily, you can save an album you are working on to both a TapToTalk and the User Album Library by checking the "Save to Library" option in Album Outliner.

For example, the Starter Album in the Standard Album Library is used by many professionals and parents as an album starting point. They copy it to their TapToTalk and modify "foods" or "emotions" to suit the child. With the User Album Library, you can similarly create the foundation for albums that you can use as templates to start a new album for a child.

TapToTalk Designer Agency users also have an agency-wide album library called the Agency Album Library. Agency users can be giving the rights to create album templates that can be used by any of the professionals in the agency.

More, with TapToTalk Sharing you can even add your album templates to another TapToTalk Designer user's TapToTalk!

So use your album library to save your album designs for future use, to meet the individual needs of various kids.

Click here for more information about Album Libraries in a printable pdf.

TapToTalk AAC on the Kindle Fire

We are delighted to announce that TapToTalk will be available on the Kindle Fire as soon as that device is available.

Soon you'll have yet another choice for an AAC device. The TapToTalk app for the Kindle Fire will be free and work just like the other TapToTalk apps

As always, there will be no cost for this capability for TapToTalk Designer users. You can run your TapToTalk albums without change on the Kindle Fire, and on as many of our supported devices as you wish. No extra charge. And the TapToTalk Kindle Fire App with sample albums will be free to any Kindle Fire user.

Details will be available on the TapToTalk home page soon. Stay tuned.

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Amazon is really extending themselves for their customers. They are testing the apps in the Amazon Appstore for Android to determine if they work properly with the Kindle Fire.  Here is the notification we received from Amazon:

Dear Assistyx LLC,

Congratulations! The following app has passed our compatibility testing for Kindle Fire: TapToTalk

TapToTalk is already available to our customers through the Amazon Appstore for Android.

We thank you for your continued support of the Amazon Appstore.

Best regards,
Amazon Appstore Account Team

We at TapToTalk say, "Thank you, Amazon!"

Where in the world is TapToTalk?

TapToTalk can be used in any language, and so it is not surprising that it is used in over 20 languages in 40 countries, on every continent except Antarctica (we have dolphin and orangutan users, but it seems the penguins are holdouts).

Here are the top 10 countries in numbers of paid TapToTalk users, from most to least:

1. United States
2. Canada
3. Australia
4. United Kingdom
5. Ireland
6. Mexico
7. Israel
8. Italy
9. Germany
10. Finland, Malaysia, France, New Zealand (tied)

Here is how the list looks when you factor in population. These are the top 10 countries in per capita TapToTalk use:

1. Ireland
2. Australia
3. United States
4. Canada
5. United Kingdom
6. Israel
7. New Zealand
8. Finland
9. Denmark
10. Singapore

TapToTalk users are part of a global community, giving kids a voice.


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