Features

EZConversation is a grid-based symbol AAC app for the iPad, with two things most grid systems don't have: it listens to the conversation partner, and it builds the grammar for you.

Listening Mode

A wide Tap to Listen button sits along the bottom of the screen. Press it, say your sentence normally, and it stops on its own after a couple of seconds of quiet. The tile grid then refills with the vocabulary most likely to be needed for a reply.

It also pulls out names and specific things that were mentioned. Ask "do you want to go to Splash Mountain?" and "Splash Mountain" appears as a tile, even though no built-in dictionary contains it.

What it does not do is answer, choose words, or speak. It changes which tiles are within reach and nothing else — every word in the app stays reachable by hand, through topics, search, or the keyboard. If it mishears, press it again or pick the topic yourself.

The Sentence Builder

A short, telegraphic tap sequence comes out as fluent English.

What it handles

• Verb endings — "he go" becomes "he goes".
• Articles — supplies "a", "an" and "the" where English wants one, and leaves them out where it doesn't.
• Missing "is / am / are" — "I happy" becomes "I am happy"; "book under table" becomes "the book is under the table".
• Negation — a "no" tile before an action produces "don't", "doesn't", "isn't" or "not", as the sentence requires.
• Tense — a time word anywhere puts the whole sentence in the past or future, including "five minutes ago" and "last night".
• Questions — "why I sad" becomes "why am I sad".
• Body parts — "stomach hurts" is always "my stomach hurts", never "the stomach".
• Coordination — two things tapped in a row are joined with "and", since there's no "and" tile to tap.
• Accidental double taps — treated as one tap.

No function-word tiles, on purpose

There is no my, your or his tile; no and, but or because; no is. Possession is tapped as the plain person, twice: I · like · I · car is "I like my car", and he · like · he · car is "he likes his car".

That is the whole point. The I / me / my distinction is the morphology this population struggles with most, so nothing in the app asks anyone to learn it.

Fixed rules, not a language model

The same taps produce the same sentence every time, on every device, with no sampling and no drift after somebody else's server updates. That matters for AAC: what a user learns about their device stays true. It also means a wrong output is a reproducible bug that can be reported and fixed — for everyone at once.

Where the app inserts a word, it shows as a small grey chip in the message bar, and it can be switched off with a tap.

Finding words

• Instant Words — yes, no, wait, help, I don't know, stop sit in a fixed strip under the message bar and speak the moment they're tapped, without waiting for a sentence. They never move.
• Pinned words — the core vocabulary, always at the front of the grid whatever topic is showing. Fully editable.
• Topics — twenty-five picture-first topic cards, from Food and Feelings to Not Well, School and Money, ordered most generally useful first.
• Search — every word in every topic, plus your own people and custom words.
• Type — an on-screen keyboard with predictions that learn from what this user actually says.

Two keyboard modes

The keyboard commits either Words — each word becomes its own tile and gets the full grammar treatment — or Phrase, where the whole line becomes a single tile the grammar rules leave completely alone.

Phrase mode is the escape hatch for someone typing a finished sentence: the Sentence Builder is designed for telegraphic input, so it would otherwise "correct" a sentence that was already right. A committed phrase behaves like any other tile and mixes freely with tapped ones.

Making it yours

• People & Pets — family, friends, teachers and pets, each with a photo. The photo appears on the tile; only the name is ever spoken. This is usually the highest-value setup step there is.
• Your own words — anything the app doesn't have, with a photo from the camera roll. Add a word straight into a topic, so it turns up where it belongs, and answer a plain-language question about what kind of word it is so the grammar handles it correctly.
• Pinned words — add, remove and reorder the always-visible core, with a restore-defaults option.
• Saved phrases — whole sentences kept on the home screen, best captured by pressing Save on something that has just been said.
• Reorder — drag tiles into the arrangement that suits this user, on the real grid rather than in a proxy list.
• Recent — the last 50 sentences, each of which can be re-spoken, or loaded back into the message bar as tiles for editing.

The voice

Rather than a list of prebuilt voices, the voice is built from a few traits — an age, a vocal quality, and speed, pitch and volume sliders. Every change plays a sample immediately, because the only way to judge a voice is to hear it.

The vocal qualities are labelled Type A, B and C, not by gender. A voice isn't a gender, and nobody should have to file themselves under one to choose how they sound. The voice syncs with everything else, so one built on one iPad follows the account to the next.

Access and accommodations

• Tile size — small, medium or large, trading words per screen against target size.
• Hold to preview — press and hold any tile to hear that word without adding it to the sentence. The hold time is adjustable.
• Repeat-tap filtering — ignores a second tap on the same tile within an adjustable window, for tremor or a bouncy touch.
• Speak each word when tapped — optional per-selection audio confirmation.

Access is by direct touch. There is currently no switch scanning, eye-gaze integration, auditory scanning or head-pointer support.

Supporter modeling

The best way to teach AAC is to use it yourself in front of the person learning it. But the app is keeping track of what its user says — both to improve word predictions and for progress reports — and a supporter's sentences aren't theirs.

Supporter modeling suppresses both while it's on, with an unmissable orange banner so it's never left on by accident. It resets off every time the app launches: it is a mode for a moment, not a setting.

Backup and reporting

Where a school or clinic has set up an account, the app signs in at launch and quietly backs up people, custom words, pinned words, phrases, recent sentences and settings.

A user can then link a parent or SLP to their account with an invite code, which gives that person a usage report in the browser: how many sentences over time, which topics they came from, vocabulary breadth, and average sentence length by week. It's counts, never transcripts — and anything said with Supporter modeling on is excluded.

Access is always granted by the user and revocable by them at any time. There is no way to look someone up from the other side.

Symbols

Tiles use OpenMoji for concrete nouns and Mulberry Symbols for abstract AAC vocabulary, both under CC BY-SA, with attribution shipped in the app. Colour follows the Modified Fitzgerald Key, so it matches what a student is likely to see in school materials.

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